Root and Tuber Crops
Root and Tuber Crops John Bradshaw Editor A number of root and tuber crops were first domesticated several thousand years ago, but none became important on a global scale until after the end of the 16th century. Today the potato is the world’s third most
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HANDBOOK OF PLANT BREEDING Editors-in-Chief: JAIME PROHENS, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain FERNANDO NUEZ, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain MARCELO J. CARENA, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA
For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/7290
J.E. Bradshaw Editor
Root and Tuber Crops
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Editor J.E. Bradshaw Scottish Crop Research Institute Invergowrie Dundee DD2 5DA United Kingdom [email protected]
ISBN 978-0-387-92764-0 e-ISBN 978-0-387-92765-7 DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-92765-7 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010931514 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
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. This brief introduction is a broad overview and inevitably a simplification of the details which follow in the individual chapters where unresolved issues are discussed. The potato was domesticated in South America, cassava probably in South America but possibly in Mexico, and sweet potato probably in Mexico but possibly in South America, some 8,000 years ago. All three crops have wild relatives in both Central and South America. Much later, after Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, European sailors introduced the potato to Europe and from there to many other parts of the world, and both cassava and sweet potato to Africa and then Asia. Interestingly, the sweet potato was being grown in Oceania before Columbus, but the routes of introduction are still debated. Today the potato is the third most important food crop in the world, after wheat and rice, and the four largest potato producing countries are China, the Russian Federation, India, and the USA. Cass
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