This book forms part of a series on the relevance of wild relatives in crop improvement, in this case cereals. All major and most minor cereals are included, including the ‘pseudocereal’ buckwheat. Specialist authors have provided the individual chapters, which follow a general layout with sections on: Taxonomy, Species description, Species distribution, Genome relationships, Genetic stocks, Uses, Examples of traits of interest, Problem issues and Future recommendations. However, knowledge varies enormously between species/genera, e.g. a classic overview is given for wheat, recent updates are included for maize, but only basic information is available for Dasypyrum. An introductory chapter would have been useful, chapter order is random, there is no cross-referencing and no quality control with some chapters being disproportionate in size (e.g. over 100 pages devoted to the weedy group Dasypyrum and only 11 to barley). Taxonomic dilemmas are overcome by diligent authors listing synonyms. There are some notable omissions in crop improvement schemes, e.g. little or no comment on F1 hybrids in rye and alien introgression in wheat; there is also a tendency for American authors to overlook European literature and vice versa. The quality of individual chapters is variable, the better ones describe domestication events, mutation, methods of gene transfer, databases, repositories of genetic stocks and production of varieties with wild traits (wild relatives are as yet largely untapped as genetic resources). The book is best regarded as an introduction to each genus.