Cucurbits, 2nd Edition


Book Description

Completely updated with new content and full-colour figures throughout, the second edition of this successful book continues to provide complete coverage relating to the production of cucurbits, including cucumbers, gourds, muskmelons, pumpkins, squashes and watermelons. These crops are grown worldwide and represent one of the largest and most important groups of horticultural food plants. This second edition of Cucurbits provides up-to-date, succinct and authoritative knowledge on this variety of crops and reflects on significant advances in the areas of production, breeding and evolution.




The Cucumber Book


Book Description

Your customers want rock-solid, bug-free software that does exactly what they expect it to do. Yet they can't always articulate their ideas clearly enough for you to turn them into code. You need Cucumber: a testing, communication, and requirements tool-all rolled into one. All the code in this book is updated for Cucumber 2.4, Rails 5, and RSpec 3.5. Express your customers' wild ideas as a set of clear, executable specifications that everyone on the team can read. Feed those examples into Cucumber and let it guide your development. Build just the right code to keep your customers happy. You can use Cucumber to test almost any system or any platform. Get started by using the core features of Cucumber and working with Cucumber's Gherkin DSL to describe-in plain language-the behavior your customers want from the system. Then write Ruby code that interprets those plain-language specifications and checks them against your application. Next, consolidate the knowledge you've gained with a worked example, where you'll learn more advanced Cucumber techniques, test asynchronous systems, and test systems that use a database. Recipes highlight some of the most difficult and commonly seen situations the authors have helped teams solve. With these patterns and techniques, test Ajax-heavy web applications with Capybara and Selenium, REST web services, Ruby on Rails applications, command-line applications, legacy applications, and more. Written by the creator of Cucumber and the co-founders of Cucumber Ltd., this authoritative guide will give you and your team all the knowledge you need to start using Cucumber with confidence. What You Need: Windows, Mac OS X (with XCode) or Linux, Ruby 1.9.2 and upwards, Cucumber 2.4, Rails 5, and RSpec 3.5







Crooked Cucumber


Book Description

Shunryu Suzuki is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."




The Physiology of Vegetable Crops, 2nd Edition


Book Description

Completely updated and revised, this bestselling book continues to explain the growth and developmental processes involved in the formation of vegetables. Since the publication of the successful first edition significant discoveries, particularly in the area of molecular biology, have deepened and broadened our knowledge and understanding of these processes. This new edition brings the topic up-to-date and is presented over two sections: the first provides general knowledge on germination, transplanting, flowering, the effects of stress and modelling, whilst the second section details the physiology of specific crops or crop groups.




Web Development Recipes


Book Description

Modern web development is so much more than just HTML and CSS with a little JavaScript mixed in. People want faster, more usable interfaces that work on multiple devices, and you need the latest tools and techniques to make that happen. This book gives you over 40 concise solutions to today's web development problems, and introduces new solutions that will expand your skill set---proven, practical advice from authors who use these tools and techniques every day. In this completely updated edition, you'll find innovative new techniques and workflows, as well as reworked solutions that take advantage of new developments. Web development is constantly changing, and you need to stay on top of your game. Discover a wide spectrum of web development techniques, from how to improve the way you present content, to solutions for data analysis, testing, and deployment. In this edition we introduce new tools, add new recipes, and modernize old ones. You'll use Vagrant to automate server setup, and you'll discover new ways to develop blogs and static sites. You'll learn how to use Grunt to script the deployment of your web project, and use Angular to build a single-page app. You'll learn how to make content stand out with simple cross-browser styles; create animations that work well everywhere without plugins; and create lightweight, responsive layouts. We'll show you how to use preprocessors like CoffeeScript and Sass; write tests for your code; use Git and Dropbox to collaborate; configure and secure the Apache web server; use virtualization to set up your own servers automatically; and much more. Whether you're new to front-end development, or you've got a few years of experience, you'll become a more versatile developer by finding out how---and why---to use these solutions in your next project. What You Need: Your favorite text editor, the most current version of Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari, and a working knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. Familiarity with command-line interfaces is a plus.




Horticultural Reviews, Volume 44


Book Description

Horticultural Reviews presents state-of-the-art reviews on topics in horticultural science and technology covering both basic and applied research. Topics covered include the horticulture of fruits, vegetables, nut crops, and ornamentals. These review articles, written by world authorities, bridge the gap between the specialized researcher and the broader community of horticultural scientists and teachers.




Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding


Book Description

The revised edition of the bestselling textbook, covering both classical and molecular plant breeding Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding integrates theory and practice to provide an insightful examination of the fundamental principles and advanced techniques of modern plant breeding. Combining both classical and molecular tools, this comprehensive textbook describes the multidisciplinary strategies used to produce new varieties of crops and plants, particularly in response to the increasing demands to of growing populations. Illustrated chapters cover a wide range of topics, including plant reproductive systems, germplasm for breeding, molecular breeding, the common objectives of plant breeders, marketing and societal issues, and more. Now in its third edition, this essential textbook contains extensively revised content that reflects recent advances and current practices. Substantial updates have been made to its molecular genetics and breeding sections, including discussions of new breeding techniques such as zinc finger nuclease, oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis, RNA-dependent DNA methylation, reverse breeding, genome editing, and others. A new table enables efficient comparison of an expanded list of molecular markers, including Allozyme, RFLPs, RAPD, SSR, ISSR, DAMD, AFLP, SNPs and ESTs. Also, new and updated “Industry Highlights” sections provide examples of the practical application of plant breeding methods to real-world problems. This new edition: Organizes topics to reflect the stages of an actual breeding project Incorporates the most recent technologies in the field, such as CRSPR genome edition and grafting on GM stock Includes numerous illustrations and end-of-chapter self-assessment questions, key references, suggested readings, and links to relevant websites Features a companion website containing additional artwork and instructor resources Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding offers researchers and professionals an invaluable resource and remains the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduates in plant science, particularly those studying plant breeding, biotechnology, and genetics.




Writing Great Specifications


Book Description

Summary Writing Great Specifications is an example-rich tutorial that teaches you how to write good Gherkin specification documents that take advantage of the benefits of specification by example. Foreword written by Gojko Adzic. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology The clearest way to communicate a software specification is to provide examples of how it should work. Turning these story-based descriptions into a well-organized dev plan is another matter. Gherkin is a human-friendly, jargon-free language for documenting a suite of examples as an executable specification. It fosters efficient collaboration between business and dev teams, and it's an excellent foundation for the specification by example (SBE) process. About the Book Writing Great Specifications teaches you how to capture executable software designs in Gherkin following the SBE method. Written for both developers and non-technical team members, this practical book starts with collecting individual feature stories and organizing them into a full, testable spec. You'll learn to choose the best scenarios, write them in a way that anyone can understand, and ensure they can be easily updated by anyone.management. What's Inside Reading and writing Gherkin Designing story-based test cases Team Collaboration Managing a suite of Gherkin documents About the Reader Primarily written for developers and architects, this book is accessible to any member of a software design team. About the Author Kamil Nicieja is a seasoned engineer, architect, and project manager with deep expertise in Gherkin and SBE. Table of contents Introduction to specification by example and Gherkin PART 1 - WRITING EXECUTABLE SPECIFICATIONS WITH EXAMPLES The specification layer and the automation layer Mastering the Given-When-Then template The basics of scenario outlines Choosing examples for scenario outlines The life cycle of executable specifications Living documentation PART 2 - MANAGING SPECIFICATION SUITES Organizing scenarios into a specification suite Refactoring features into abilities and business needs Building a domain-driven specification suite Managing large projects with bounded contexts




Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber


Book Description

Master BDD to deliver higher-value software more quickly To develop high-value products quickly, software development teams need better ways to collaborate. Agile methods like Scrum and Kanban are helpful, but they’re not enough. Teams need better ways to work inside each sprint or work item. Behavior-driven development (BDD) adds just enough structure for product experts, testers, and developers to collaborate more effectively. Drawing on extensive experience helping teams adopt BDD, Richard Lawrence and Paul Rayner show how to explore changes in system behavior with examples through conversations, how to capture your examples in expressive language, and how to flow the results into effective automated testing with Cucumber. Where most BDD resources focus on test automation, this guide goes deep into how BDD changes team collaboration and what that collaboration looks like day to day. Concrete examples and practical advice will prepare you to succeed with BDD, whatever your context or role. · Learn how to collaborate better by using concrete examples of system behavior · Identify your project’s meaningful increment of value so you’re always working on something important · Begin experimenting with BDD slowly and at low risk · Move smoothly from informal examples to automated tests in Cucumber · Use BDD to deliver more frequently with greater visibility · Make Cucumber scenarios more expressive to ensure you’re building the right thing · Grow a Cucumber suite that acts as high-value living documentation · Sustainably work with complex scenario data · Get beyond the “mini-waterfalls” that often arise on Scrum teams