The success of the ‘Green Revolution’ has enabled agriculture to keep pace with the relentless growth of human populations through the development of semi-dwarf crops resistant to pests and pathogens, whose yield is maintained through the applications of agrochemicals, mineral fertilizers and irrigation. Food production must continue to increase into the immediate future if the world population is to continue to grow at a rate of 80 million people a year. This increase in food production must be achieved through increased yields from the same land area farmed today.

The 19 chapters of this excellent book cover many of the aspects of the growth and mineral nutrition of field crops that will be required to achieve sustainable, high-yield agriculture. It provides a general introduction to the mineral nutrition of field crops, environmental factors affecting crop production and the management of soils for sustainable crop production. Individual chapters describe in detail the growth and development, nutritional requirements and management options for the production of wheat and barley, rice, maize, sorghum, soyabean, common bean and cowpea, peanut, sugarcane, cassava and potato, cotton, forage and cover crops. The book will inform the next generation of academics, students, research scientists and extension workers on whose efforts the next ‘Evergreen Revolution’ will depend. I recommend that they not only read it carefully, but also swiftly put its messages into practice.