Sugar Beet provides full details of all aspects of the crop, including its agronomy, botany, harvesting and processing. Chapters are written by many experts from around the world. It is an essential purchase for anyone involved with the sugar beet crop and the sugar industry.

Special Features:

• Comprehensive coverage of a major world crop
• covers all aspects of successful sugar beet growing
• more than 2500 international references
• color images to assist in the identification of sugar beet pests, diseases and nutrient deficiencies

Contents

Introduction

• Origins of crop
• Production
• Crop improvement
• Where grown
• Sugar consumption
• Economics and politics
• World production of sugar from beet and cane
• Sugar beet performance

Development of Sugar Beet

• Early domestication of beet crops
• Development of sugar beet from fodder beet
• Establishment of a global beet sugar industry
• Technical development of sugar beet

Plant Structure and Crop Physiology

• Storage root development and sugar accumulation
• Nutritional physiology and beet quality
• Reproductive development

Genetics and Breeding

• Objectives of sugar beet breeding
• Characters subjected to selection
• The inheritance of specific characters
• Autotetraploidy in sugar beet
• Selection methods
• Traditional methods of variety development in sugar beet
• Background to hybrid breeding in sugar beet
• Hybrid breeding methods and development of hybrid varieties
• Breeding for specific characters
• The impact of plant biotechnology on sugar beet breeding
• Strategies in a comprehensive hybrid breeding program with sugar beet

Seed Production and Quality

• Methods of beet seed production
• Flowering, maturation and seed harvest
• Seed processing
• Quality testing
• Seed law requirements

Soil Tillage and Crop Establishment

• Objectives of tillage
• Primary tillage
• Secondary tillage, sowing and post-sowing tilage
• Mechanical weed control
• Soil compaction
• Subsoil loosening
• Protection against wind erosion

Agronomy

• Crop growth
• Analyzing agronomy in physiological terms
• Analyzing the effects of weeds and virus yellows on growth and yield
• Mathematical models and their uses

Nutrition—Nitrogen

• Importance
• Nitrogen uptake and concentration
• Nitrogen deficiency and its detection
• Effect of nitrogen on germination, emergence and establishment
• Effect of nitrogen on growth and yield
• Effect of nitrogen on root quality
• Soil supplies of nitrogen
• Form and application of nitrogen fertilizer
• Interactions with the environment

Nutrition—Phosphorus, Sulphur, Potassium, Sodium, Calcium, Magnesium and Micronutrients - Liming and Nutrient Deficiencies

Water Use and Irrigation

• Water as a resource
• The sugar beet crop and water
• Water and physiology
• Defining the water status of plants and soils
• Water use by sugar beet
• Irrigation management
• Responses to irrigation
• Irrigation practices
• Deficit irrigation
• Salinity
• Germination and emergence
• Irrigation and other factors
• Drought tolerance

Virus Diseases

• Rhizomania
• Other soil-borne viruses
• Other diseases

Fungal and Bacterial Diseases

• Seedling diseases
• Foliar diseases
• Root diseases
• Bacterial diseases

Pests

• Effects of pests on establishment, growth and yiels
• Distribution, biology and pathogenicity of major pests
• Minimizing yield losses caused by pests

Weeds and Weed Control

• Weeds
• Weed competition and the effect of time of removal
• Weed control
• Weed control outside the sugar beet crop
• Herbicide resistance
• Crop injury from herbicides

Storage

• Respiration
• Carbohydrate impurity formation
• Storage rots
• Crop management and growing conditions
• Reducing mechanical damage
• Storage pile management

Root Quality and Processing

• Historical overview of beet technical quality
• Concepts of good beet quality
• Quality parameters
• Factors influencing quality
• Evolution of beet quality

By-products and Other Uses of Sugar Beet

• Sugar beet roots
• Sugar beet tops
• Sugar beet pulp
• Sugar beet molasses
• Molassed sugar beet pulp (feed)
• Beet vinasse

Index

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