Crop Responses to Environment PDF

Preface

This book is primarily for scientists and students who are interested in developing improved crop cultivars and management methods. However, it emphasizes principles and theories concerning plant responses to environment that are relevant to plants in natural as well as agricultural systems. Many practical applications to plant breeding, agronomy, and horticulture are discussed, including some examples from my work in agricultural research and extension on irrigated systems in California and rainfed systems in Africa, and as a farmer in England. I have included many references to key papers that describe original concepts or research observations or reviews of important topics and some addresses to web sites that provide useful information.

This book is designed so that it is most easy to read in a linear sequence from the front to the back. Experienced readers will have no difficulty skipping among the chapters, in that each chapter is designed to be independent with references to critical parts of other chapters as they are needed. The reader may get the impression that some themes are repeated in different chapters. This is deliberate, in that I feel that crop responses to environment cannot be explained well in a simple linear sequence but are most effectively explained by a series of iterative cycles that bring in either additional elements or different ways of looking at the same issue.