Crop Imporvement offers both practical information and up-to-date reserch. It also suggest a vision of new directions and partnerships that are expected to evolve in this century. This book is an essential resource for practicing plant breeders and geneticists at universities, government agencies and industry. It should also be of use to teachers and students engaged in crop breeding. This book includes detailed information on breeding specific crops, including rice, tropical maize, sorghum, common bean, sugar beet, bananas and plantain, cotton.

Table of Contents:
Part I:INTRODUCTION- VISION, Crop Breeding in the Twenty-First Century; PART II: CROP IMPROVEMENT, Rice Improvement:Past, Present and Future; Tropical Maize: Innovative Approaches for Sustainable Productivity and Production Increases; Maize Improvement for Resistance of Aflatoxins: Progress and Challenges; Sorghum Improvement: Past Achievements and Future Prospects; The Common Bean and Its Genetic Improvement; Sugar Beet Breeding and Improvement; Bananas and Plantations: Future Challenges in Musa Breeding; Molecular Markers, Genomics, and Cotton Improvement; PART III: CROP ISSUES, Physiological and Biochemical Responses of Plants to Drought and Heat Stress; Stability Analysis in Crop Performance Evaluation; Best Linear Unbiased Prediction: A Mixed-Model Approach in Multienvironment Trials; Index;