Overview; Trends and prospects for cassava in the third world; Delphi survey for the assessment of potential yields of cassava in the third world; Economics of cassava in Africa; The evaluation of cassava consumption in Latin America; The meat of the mattter; cassava's potential as a feed source in tropical latin America; Trends and prospects for cassava in India; Trends and prospects for cassava in Indonesia Faisal kasryno; Trends and prospects for cassava in Thailand; Trends and prospects for cassava in Nigeria; Trends and prospects for cassava in Zaire.

Trends in production and use; Factors influencing the use of cassava; Potential yields of cassava; Scenarios of cassava output and use in 2000.

Synthesizes a significant amount of data and information on roots and tubers in an effort to provide a clearer vision of their past, present, and future roles in the food systems of developing countries. How the production and use of these commodities have changed and will continue to change over time are all the more important to understand because of the contribution they make to the diets and income-generating activities of the rural and urban poor in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Provides a fuller understanding of the prospects of roots and tubers for food, feed, and other uses in developing countries.

In 1995, TAC commissioned an Inter-Centre Review of Root and Tuber Crops Research in the CGIAR, and that group's final report was submitted in April 1996. Among its findings, the review recommended that the Centers working on these crops prepare, in consultation with non-CGIAR members, "a comprehensive, documented text that sets out a vision for root and tuber research employing inter-Centre collaborations and institutional partnerships ... "(TAC, 1997). At International Centers' Week 1996, representatives of CIAT, CIP, IFPRI, IPGRI, and IITA met, formed an informal committee, and established a task force to prepare such a report, with CIP and CIAT representatives acting as co-convenors. This document synthesizes the principal findings of the subsequent work. Roots and tuber crops have myriad and complex roles to play in feeding the world in the coming decades. Far from being one sort of crop that serves one specific purpose, they will be many things to many-very many-people.