The first and major part of this book explains the underlying principles of ‘traditional plant breeding and genetics’. It is organized into eight sections: The historical perspectives and importance of plant breeding; General biological concepts; Germplasm issues; Genetic analysis in plant breeding; Tools in plant breeding; Classical methods of plant breeding; Selected breeding objectives and Cultivar release and commercial seed production. The second part consists of eight chapters describing breeding of eight crops: wheat, maize, rice, sorghum, soybean, peanut, potato and cotton. Embedded within most chapters are ‘industry highlights’ boxes written by ‘guest authors’.

Part one is a comprehensive and thorough grounding in plant breeding containing a lot of information in an easy-to-read manner. The ‘industry highlight boxes’ provide informative examples illustrating the theme of each chapter. The only criticism is the somewhat scant treatment of ‘modern crop improvement’ methods such as marker assisted selection (MAS) and genetic modification.

Part two is disappointing. The bias towards US breeding virtually excludes the achievements by breeders elsewhere, and the opportunity to redress this in the ‘industry highlight’ articles has largely been missed. The chapters are fairly superficial ‘historical accounts’ of breeding in each crop and the opportunity to illustrate the application of modern breeding techniques (e.g. MAS in maize) has not been taken. The bias towards cereals omits the problems associated with breeding other types of crops e.g. vegetable, fruit or root crops.

However, despite the limitations of part two I would thoroughly recommend this book as a textbook of plant breeding.