Читать книгу Cucurbits - James R. Myers - Страница 6

PREFACE

Scientists attempt to make the world more understandable, enjoyable and usable for all. Horticulture is an important practical science with a long history. Although humans have been doing informal crop improvement for 12,000 years, scientific plant breeding did not begin until the late 17th century. Centuries of evolution have produced a diverse plant kingdom, requiring more detailed studies of distinct parts of the plant world to maximize our knowledge and use of individual crops.

The Cucurbitaceae is one of the most genetically diverse groups of crops in the plant kingdom. As a family and as individual crops, cucurbits epitomize adaptive differentiation and evolutionary divergence. Not only may cultivars within a crop vary significantly in their characteristics, but also the same cultivar grown in distinct areas can have different needs in response to diverse local growing conditions. Different cultures and ethnic groups have different cultivar preferences and horticultural practices, and that in turn increases the morphological diversity within the crop.

Crop production science has moved from general to specific. Uniformity in practice is being replaced by individual treatment of each small area of a farmer’s field, study of the microenvironment, and the concept of stability of performance for cultivars. In research, we must now account for a greater number of the variables present in any biological experiment.

Research on cucurbits around the world has greatly increased our knowledge of this crop group. We could not begin to cover all the pertinent information in one text. Instead, we hope that this book will give the reader a general awareness of cucurbit crop production, an understanding of the underlying biological concepts as they pertain to cucurbits, and a jumping-off point from which to pursue investigations on particular crop species.

Although diverse, most cucurbits do share a collection of characteristics (e.g. rapidly growing vines with tendrils, possessing relatively large fruit, adaptable to the point of becoming weeds, containing various bioactive compounds) that make them a unique, fascinating, and useful family of plants. Continued research should lead to their enhanced exploitation and appreciation.

We would like to thank the previous authors of this book, R.W. Robinson and D.S. Decker-Walters, who formed the foundation on which we built this version. We would also like to thank Liberty Hyde Bailey, Tom Whitaker, Henry Munger, Clint Peterson, Carroll Barnes, Greg Tolla, Fred Andrus, Jim Crall, Gary Elmstrom, Don Maynard, Tom Williams, Linda Wessel-Beaver, Jim McCreight, Harry Paris, Brent Loy, V.S. Sheshadri, Tom Zitter and Michel Pitrat, who did so much to increase our knowledge and appreciation of cucurbits.