This book on industrial crops is one volume in a series of 10 volumes on wild crop relatives edited by Chittaranjan Kole. Thirty-two authors from around the world have contributed to this volume. It is organised into 10 chapters in alphabetical order by genus: Beta, Corchorus, Crotalaria, Dioscorea, Erianthus, Gossypium, Ipomoea, Manihot, Miscanthus and Saccharum, although many readers will regard cassava, sweet potato and yams as staple foods rather than industrial crops. Furthermore, length of each chapter does not always correspond to economic importance; for example, there are 11 pages on Erianthus but only 10 on Ipomoea. While the editor has not imposed strict adherence to headings within chapters, the contents are much as might be expected from the series title. The reader will find information on the botany and taxonomy of the genus; the evolutionary history and phylogenetic relationships between wild and cultivated species; conservation and characterisation of genetic resources for use in breeding; genomic resources but including classical cytogenetics and molecular genetics; and some of the agricultural problems that arise from the close proximity of wild and cultivated species (e.g. gene flow from genetically modified plants and wild species as weeds). Each chapter ends with recommendations for future actions. The volume should prove a useful reference work for libraries, but research workers in future will probably expect to use good databases on genomic and germplasm resources. I also suspect that breeders will appreciate reviews of their crops that integrate genomic and germplasm resources with all of the other aspects of breeding.