This book features six peer-reviewed reviews on viruses affecting key horticultural crops.The first chapter considers best management practices for the control of viruses and virus-like agents in apple production, including the development of orchards with clean, virus-tested planting stock. The second chapter comprehensively details how Apple mosaic virus is spread and describes the symptoms displayed by affected host plants.The third chapter examines the challenge of Plum...

Focus on key issues in expanding the genetic base for Musa, including, exploiting current collections of germplasm and collecting and evaluating wild Musa species and landracesCovers methods for improving fertility, resistance and other traits in CavendishReviews the range of conventional and modern molecular techniques for breeding new banana varieties

Bananas are a staple food for over 500 million people and are also an important cash crop. Fusarium wilt, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense, is one of the most destructive diseases of banana globally. Since the 1990s, an aggressive variant of this fungus, called Tropical Race 4 (TR4), severely affected banana plantations in Southeast Asia from where it spread to other continents, including Latin America, where the global banana export market is primari...

Biotic stresses cause yield loss of 31-42% in crops in addition to 6-20% during post-harvest stage. Understanding interaction of crop plants to the biotic stresses caused by insects, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and oomycetes, etc. is important to develop resistant crop varieties. Knowledge on the advanced genetic and genomic crop improvement strategies including molecular breeding, transgenics, genomic-assisted breeding and the recently emerging genome editing for developing resistant variet...

Plant Tissue Culture, Third Edition builds on the classroom tested, audience proven manual that has guided users through successful plant culturing A.tumefaciens mediated transformation, infusion technology, the latest information on media components and preparation, and regeneration and morphogenesis along with new exercises and diagrams provide current information and examples. The included experiments demonstrate major concepts and can be conducted with a variety of plant material that ...

This open-access textbook provides a comprehensive, up-to-date guide for students and practitioners wishing to access in a single volume the key disciplines and principles of wheat breeding. Wheat is a cornerstone of food security: it is the most widely grown of any crop and provides 20% of all human calories and protein. The authorship of this book includes world class researchers and breeders whose expertise spans cutting-edge academic science all the way to impacts in farmers’ fields. T...

The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an environment-friendly method of pest control that integrates well into area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes. This book takes a generic, thematic, comprehensive, and global approach in describing the principles and practice of the SIT. The strengths and weaknesses, and successes and failures, of the SIT are evaluated openly and fairly from a scientific perspective. The SIT is applicable to some major pests of plant-, animal-, and h...

The major objective of this book is to highlight the significance of phytonematodes in horticulture. Detailed and latest information on major aspects of phytonematodes associated exclusively with horticultural crops, which is the need of the day, is lacking. Hence, the book has been written mainly with the objective of providing its readers, comprehensive information on the advanced aspects related to phytonematodes associated with horticultural crops. It also provides basic information on...

Integrated Pest Management: Current Concepts and Ecological Perspective presents an overview of alternative measures to traditional pest management practices using biological control and biotechnology. The removal of some highly effective broad-spectrum chemicals, caused by concerns over environmental health and public safety, has resulted in the development of alternative, reduced risk crop protection products. These products, less toxic to the environment and easily integrated into biolo...

The first edition of Tanada and Kaya's Insect Pathology is the standard reference in the field for researchers and both undergraduate and graduate students and is well known worldwide among entomologists. However, the field has seen rapid advances in the 20 years since its original publication, and the new edition brings together an essential and updated resource for researchers with 13 chapters edited by Fernando E. Vega and Harry K. Kaya. Many of these advances involve new insights on ec...

Plant-parasitic and free-living nematodes are increasingly important in relation to food security, quarantine measures, ecology (including pollution studies), and research on host-parasite interactions. Being mostly microscopic, nematodes are challenging organisms for research. Techniques for Work with Plant and Soil Nematodes introduces the basic techniques for laboratory and field work with plant-parasitic and free-living soil-dwelling nematodes. Written by an international team of exper...

Discusses ways of ensuring genetic diversity, advances in wheat breeding and their use to improve properties such as drought resistance and cold tolerance;Summarises research on factors affecting nutritional and other aspects of wheat quality;Reviews advances in understanding wheat pests and diseases together with ways of controlling them such as disease-resistant varieties, integrated pest and weed management