Also available in print format.

A gradual increase in global potato production will help address future food supply and nutrition issues, especially when combined with modern breeding techniques. The major focus of many potato breeding programmes is to improve yield and quality while using fewer production resources, such as water, fertilizer, and land, than current varieties. These programmes are also focused on identifying varieties with resistance to major diseases and insect pests in order to reduce the need for pesticides, thereby maintaining or improving the health of the environment. Advances in marker-assisted selection, gene mapping, and genomics have allowed breeders to identify desirable and undesirable traits in new cultivars more quickly; improving the chances of finding superior varieties while reducing the time it takes to get them to market. In conjunction with modern breeding efforts, the industry is continuously improving production, storage, processing, and marketing operations to offer consumers high-quality, nutritious potatoes year-round. This book discusses many of these items and explains the origin of the domesticated potato, its uses, nutritional contributions, production, storage and markets, plant anatomy, physiology and development, pest identification and management, and traditional and biotechnological cultivar development techniques. By incorporating intensive literature review with the applied expertise of the authors, this book is designed to educate and enlighten consumers, students, growers, industry personnel, and the scientific community.

A history of the potato / Charles Raymond Brown and Jan-Willem Henfling -- Taxonomy / Ronald G. van den Berg and N. Groendijk-Wilders -- Potato utilization and markets / Jennifer K. Bond -- Tuber development / Bjorn Kloosterman and Christian Bachem -- Plant growth and development / Carrie H. Wohleb, N. Richard Knowles, and Mark J. Pavek -- Commercial potato production and cultural management / Mark J. Pavek -- Plant-water relations and irrigation management of potato / David Levy and Warren K. Coleman -- Seed potato production / Robert D. Davidson and Kaiyun Xie -- Insect pests of potato / Timothy D. Waters and Andrew S. Jensen -- Plant parastic nematodes of potato / Juan E. Palomares-Rius, Clandio M.G. Oliveira and Vivian C. Blok -- Fungal and bacterial disease aspects in potato production / William W. Kirk and Phillip S. Wharton -- Virus disease problems facing potato industries worldwide : viruses found, climate change implications, rationalizing virus strain nomenclature and addressing the potato virus Y issue / Roger A.C. Jones -- Weed control strategies for potato (Solanum tuberosum) / Ian C. Burke and Wesley J. Everman -- Tuber physiological disorders / Loretta Mikitzel -- Postharvest storage and physiology / Paul C. Bethke -- Traditional breeding and cultivar development / Richard Novy -- Molecular breeding of potato in the postgenomic era / Richard E. Veilleux and T. Boluarte-Medina -- Nutritional characteristics of potatoes / Duroy Navarre, Aymeric Goyer, Raja Payyavula and Hanjo Hellmann -- Potato flavour / Mark A. Taylor.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Title from PDF title page (viewed March 10, 2015).