Book Description

Crop Resources contains papers that were originally presented as a symposium on Crop Resources at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany in Urbana, Illinois, 13-17 June 1976. The volume attempts to evaluate (a) the possible nonfood uses of cultivated plants; (b) the extent to which new and additional food resources may become available; (c) the prospects of several specialized uses of plants such as drugs, insecticides, rubber, and condiments; and (d) the origin of four major crops of the American Midwest and prospects for their future development. The discussions include the possibilities of developing new crops from the view of a chemist; the use of currently cultivated oil-seed crops for industrial purposes; the industrial uses of carbohydrates, principally starch and cellulose; the uses of plant materials as medicines; the successes and shortcomings of the Green Revolution; and the uses of plant materials for insecticides. This book should be of interest to anyone with a concern for natural resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. It should be of particular interest to agronomists, horticulturalists, chemists, chemical engineers, botanists, biologists, pharmacognosists, and anthropologists.