Identity-Preserved Systems: A Reference Handbook provides background for the development of processes or systems of maintaining the segregation of and documenting the identity of a product. Growers and other parties that handle, transport, condition, or process the identity-preserved (IP) product must follow strict growing and handling practices, including segregation, inspections, and cleaning of equipment to prevent other varieties from mixing with or contaminating the IP variety. The key to this system is traceability. Each production, processing, and delivery step is documented, so that products can be traced from the store shelf back to the farmers' fields and every stage in between.

The need for Identity Preservation (IP) is rapidly becoming of major importance in the world trade of agricultural crops that are enhanced genetically, grown under specific conditions, or have specific characteristics which must be identified and maintained from the seed planted to the delivery of the crop to the end-user. The handbook serves as an authoritative resource that unifies IP efforts, outlines the protocols for IP systems, and includes an operational manual that may be used at any point in the value-chain of the production and marketing effort.

This handbook describes an overall identity-preserved (IP) system, which may be utilized in ways that will meet the particular needs of the parties involved in specific trade agreements. It discusses the background of IP systems originating in the seed industry, the basics of a total IP system, and the potential electronic transfer of data and documents. By using the system of identity-preserved verification provided in Identity-Preserved Systems, the seed, specialty crop, and grain and oilseed industries can easily provide products that are identified with a paper trail verifying identity, product quality, and special characteristics.

This topic is central to contemporary concerns for more sustainable agricultural development. This is a well-written and clear book, with excellent data, tables and illustrations, addressing issues of water use, climate change, poverty and small farmers. The authors are highly respected and complement each other's acknowledged international expertise.' Professor Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK 'This useful guide shows that there is great potential for increasing the productive capacity of smallholder farms in the drylands via a range of water management techniques, from the simple to the more complex. Providing a theoretical grounding and a practical guide, Water and cereals in the drylands will appeal to workers on-location as well as students, researchers and policymakers.' New Agriculturalist Cereals are by far the most important source of food throughout the world, either directly for human consumption or indirectly in the form of animal feed for livestock products consumed as food. With world population set to rise to nine billion by 2050, there is an urgent need to examine ways to increase cereal production. Indeed recently the future of cereal production and consumption has been complicated by rising energy prices and the economics of biofuels, which are competing for the use of cereals. One way to increase cereal production is by the more effective use of marginal dryland areas. This book reviews the potential for increased cereal production in drylands across the world, from the USA, Australia and Southern Europe to Asia and Africa. It describes how improved water conservation, water harvesting and investment options can contribute to this, and suggests policies for the more efficient use of existing natural resources in order to lessen the dependence of agriculture on further irrigation development.

Summarizing landmark research, Volume 2 of this essential series furnishes information on the availability of germplasm resources that breeders can exploit for producing high-yielding cereal crop varieties. Written by leading international experts, this volume offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on employing genetic resources to increase the yield of those cereal crops that provide the main source of nutrition for two-thirds of the world. In thirteen succinct chapters, Genetic Resources, Chromosome Engineering, and Crop Improvement: Cereals, Volume 2 focuses on wheat, rice, maize, oats, barley, millet, sorghum, and rye, as well as triticale: a wheat and rye hybrid with great potential. An introductory chapter outlines the cytogenetic architecture of cereal crops, describes the principles and strategies of cytogenetics and breeding, and summarizes landmarks in current research. This sets the stage for the ensuing crop-specific chapters. Each chapter generally provides a comprehensive account of the crop, its origin, wild relatives, exploitation of genetic resources in the primary, secondary, and tertiary gene pools through breeding and cytogenetic manipulation, and genetic enrichment using the tools of molecular genetics and biotechnology. Certain to become the standard reference for improving the yields of these critical grains, this book is the definitive source of information for plant breeders, agronomists, cytogeneticists, taxonomists, molecular biologists, biotechnologists, and graduate students and researchers in these fields.