Crop evolution, adaptation, and yield

The efforts of countless agriculturalists over the past ten thousand years have led to the improvement of a wide range of agricultural crops. In this major new work, Lloyd Evans provides an integrated view of their domestication, adaptation and improvement, bringing together genetic diversity, plant breeding, physiology and aspects of agronomy. Considerations of yield and maximum yield provide continuity throughout the book. Food, feed, libre, fuel and pharmaceutical crops are all discussed. Cereals, grain legumes and root crops, both temperate and tropical, provide many of the examples, but pasture plants, oilseeds, leafy crops, fruit trees and others are also considered. The introductory chapter traverses the overall argument linking those that follow. The increasing significance of crop yields to the world's food supply is then highlighted. The next three chapters consider changes to crop plants over the past ten thousand years.^ First there are those conferring adaptedness to cultivation, through the process of domestication. Then there are those required for adaptation to different environments as the domesticated crops spread around the world. Finally there are those changes