Summarizing landmark research, Volume 4 of this essential seriesfurnishes information on the availability of germplasm resources that breeders can exploit for producing high-yielding oilseed crop varieties. Written by leading international experts, this volume presents the most up-to-date information on employing genetic resources to increase the yield of the major seven oilseed crops.
In eight succinct chapters, Genetic Resources, Chromosome Engineering, and Crop Improvement: Oilseed Crops, Volume 4 focuses on soybean, groundnut, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, brassica oilseeds, and sesame. An introductory chapter outlines the economic and nutritional importance of oilseed crops, describes the principles and strategies of cytogenetics and breeding, and summarizes landmarks in current research. This sets the stage for the ensuing crop-specific chapters. Each chapter generally provides a complete account of the crop, its origin, wild relatives, exploitation of genetic resources in the primary, secondary, and tertiary gene pools through breeding and cytogenetic manipulation, and genetic enrichment using the tools of molecular genetics and biotechnology.
Certain to become the standard reference for improving the yields of these critical crops, this book is the definitive source of information for plant breeders, agronomists, cytogeneticists, taxonomists, pathologists, entomologists, molecular biologists, food technologists, consumers, biotechnologists, and graduate students and researchers in these fields.
Table of Contents
Landmark Research in Oilseed Crops; Ram J. Singh
Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.); Ram J. Singh, Randall L. Nelson, and Gyuhwa Chung
Groundnut; Boshou Liao and Corley Holbrook
Cottonseed; R.J. Kohel and J.Z. Yu
Sunflower; Chao-Chien Jan and Gerald J. Seiler
Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.); Vrijendra Singh and N. Nimbkar
Brassica Oilseeds; Rod Snowdon, Wilfried Lühs, and Wolfgang Friedt
Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.); Amram Ashri
... References cited at the end of each chapter are extensive and provide good sources for additional information on topics mentioned in the chapter. The book focuses on a broad array of subjects that are important to the plant breeding field, including new approaches such as DNA-marker technology, marker assisted selection, tissue culture, and gene transfer. The authors did a great job in covering these subjects... .
—Crop Science 48:823–824 (March – April 2008)
... Essays weave botany, cytogenetics, domestication, genetic resources, with comprehensive bibliographies. ... Although featuring Singh's and Newell's careful work, Singh et al. report soybean cytogenetics has lagged behind other economically important crops. Thorough review of groundnut credits substantial taxonomic input by Stalker, and chronicles evaluation of core collections .... A concise table in cottonseed summarizes evolutionary relations among species in this intricate genus. Exhaustive details about wild and weedy sunflowers show Helianthus is a complex of extremes, with 10 to 200 species. Safflower compares genomic relationships of species classification with molecular data.
—Economic Botany, 2007