This is one volume of a series of 10 volumes, totalling 125 chapters. Each volume deals with a category of crops, and each chapter with a taxon. Purchasers should be aware that ‘Vegetables’ is not a stand-alone volume: brassicas are in the ‘Oilseeds’ volume and peas and beans are in ‘Legumes’. Watermelon and the grain forms of Amaranthus are included in this volume.

Each chapter has at least two authors, drawn from research institutes and universities, and covers botany, evolution, genetic conservation, the documented and potential uses of wild genes, wild relatives as new domesticates, and techniques (mainly molecular-based), which are increasingly overcoming problems often associated with wide crosses (e.g. hybrid sterility, and the recovery of acceptable cultivars). Some authors discuss the problems of wide-cross progenies and wild transgenes escaping from cultivation.

The book can be divided into the chapter on tomatoes (14 authors, 88 pages), and the rest (other Solanum spp, Allium, Daucus, Lactuca, Capsicum, Raphanus, Spinacia, Cucumis, Momordica and Asparagus). Much of the logic and practice of genetic conservation and exploitation is based on tomatoes, and many cultivars have been produced containing wild genes. The species continues to inspire – for example, genetic mechanisms have been found which may explain why wide crosses can give unexpected, advantageous progenies. The book would have benefited from the synthesis of ideas, technologies and objectives across its subjects: in particular – does tomato as a model reveal what could be done with other vegetable species?