October 2010

Source: Plant Breeding News

(Ed.) J.E. Bradshaw
2010, XIV, 295 p. 35 illus. in color., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-387-92764-0

This volume in the Handbook of Plant Breeding covers ten root and tuber crops in eight chapters: potato (Solanum tuberosum), cassava (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), yams (Dioscorea spp.), taro (Colocasia esculenta) and cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium), sugar beet (Beta vulgaris), fodder beet (Beta vulgaris), and swedes (Brassica napus) and turnip (Brassica rapa). Although many of these crops were first domesticated several thousand years ago, none became important on a global scale until after the end of the sixteenth century.

Since domestication, all of the crops have been improved by both conscious and unconscious farmer selection. More modern hybridization and selection by farmers, hobby breeders, and seedsmen occurred for potato, sugar beet, fodder beet, swedes, and turnips during the nineteenth century. These crops were therefore well placed to benefit from the birth of modern genetics in 1900 and the subsequent development of scientific breeding methods. Thus, for example, methods of producing hybrid cultivars to exploit heterosis for yield are available in the four crops grown from true botanic seed. Modern breeding of cassava and sweet potato started in the 1920s, but intensified really only from the 1960s and 1970s when breeding work also started to get underway for yams, taro, and cocoyams. This modern breeding work has been helped by the establishment of International Research Centers aimed at providing food security and eradicating poverty in developing countries; and this will remain important during a period of human population growth and climate change.

In order to provide uniformity with the other volumes in the Handbook of Plant Breeding, each chapter is divided into the following sections: Introduction, Origins and Domestication, Varietal Groups (where appropriate), Genetic Resources, Major Breeding Achievements, Current Goals of Breeding, Breeding Methods and Techniques, Integration of New Biotechnologies in Breeding Programs and Seed (Tuber/Commercial) Production. The length of each section varies with crop, as appropriate, and I tried to give the authors of chapters as much freedom as possible within this overall framework. We hope that the finished product will be of value both to students of plant breeding and professional plant breeders, as well as to anyone interested in this fascinating group of root and tuber crops.

(excerpted from the Preface).

Contents

1 Potatoes
John E. Bradshaw and Merideth Bonierbale
2 Cassava
Hernán Ceballos, Emmanuel Okogbenin, Juan Carlos Pérez, Luis Augusto Becerra López-Valle, and Daniel Debouck
3 Sweet Potato
Vincent Lebot
4 Yams
Gemma Arnau, K. Abraham, M.N. Sheela, Hana Chair, Alieu Sartie, and Robert Asiedu
5 Taro and Cocoyam
José Quero-Garcia, Anton Ivancic, and Vincent Lebot
6 Sugar Beet
Enrico Biancardi, J. Mitchell McGrath, Leonard W. Panella, Robert T. Lewellen, and Piergiorgio Stevanato
7 Fodder Beet
Karine Henry
8 Swedes and Turnips
Stuart Gowers

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Published: September 28, 2010