This book provides important insights into a form of economic development that utilizes existing natural resources to increase productivity of the land, and thereby improves incomes for the large number of people who own and manage coconut groves.

This book presents information on three diagnostic methods, namely visual deficiency symptoms, soil analyses, and leaf tissue analyses, for mineral nutrient deficiencies, and their integrated use, for managing most of the important tropical and temperate crops.

Because of the long life of a coconut palm--sixty to eighty years--and the relatively wide spacing the plants require, every coconut grower faces the problem of how to manage the land beneath the palms. Many of the small-scale farmers who manage over 90 percent of the 6 million hectares of coconut palms in the world have learned that raising cattle or other livestock under the palms can be profitable, as well as an effective method of controlling weeds. This book reviews current knowledge on this productive farming system, drawing on research results and experiences of successful farmers. Well illustrated with photographs from producing areas, the book includes information on the management of both natural (unimproved) and improved pastures.

This book deals an essential aspect of crop management in identification of deficiencies of plant nutrients and their diagnostic methods. The book provides soil and tissue analysis standards critical in plant nutrition.

Gene Banks and the World's Food contributes to the crucial debate on how best to preserve some of society's most valuable raw material. The authors also provide an up-to-date report on the status and locations of gene banks, which includes the latest available information on germplasm holdings by crop. They (hen discuss how these holdings are being used to develop better crop varieties for the benefit of people around the world.

Originally published in 1987.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Gene Banks and the World's Food contributes to the crucial debate on how best to preserve some of society's most valuable raw material. The authors also provide an up-to-date report on the status and locations of gene banks, which includes the latest available information on germplasm holdings by crop. They (hen discuss how these holdings are being used to develop better crop varieties for the benefit of people around the world. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The tropics are the source of many of our familiar fruits, vegetables, oils, and spice, as well as such commodities as rubber and wood. Moreover, other tropical fruits and vegetables are being introduced into our markets to offer variety to our diet. Now, as tropical forests are increasingly threatened, we face a double-fold crisis: not only the loss of the plants but also rich pools of potentially useful genes. Wild populations of crop plants harbor genes that can improve the productivity and disease resistance of cultivated crops, many of which are vital to developing economies and to global commerce. Eight chapters of this book are devoted to a variety of tropical crops-beverages, fruit, starch, oil, resins, fuelwood, fodder, spices, timber, and nuts-the history of their domestication, their uses today, and the known extent of their gene pools, both domesticated and wild. Drawing on broad research, the authors also consider conservation strategies such as parks and reserves, corporate holdings, gene banks and tissue culture collections, and debt-for-nature swaps. They stress the need for a sensitive balance between conservation and the economic well-being of local populations. If economic growth is part of the conservation effort, local populations and governments will be more strongly motivated to save their natural resources. Distinctly practical and soundly informative, this book provides insight into the overwhelming abundance of tropical forests, an unsettling sense of what we may lose if they are destroyed, and a deep appreciation for the delicate relationships between tropical forest plants and people around the world.