Kendall Lamkey, Ph.D., is the Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding and Director of the Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, Agronomy Department, Iowa State University.Mike Lee, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Plant Breeding and Genetics Panel, Agronomy Department, Iowa State University. Lee’s research focuses on developing and utilizing genetic techniques and principals to complement the programs in maize breeding and genetics with the most recent advances in applied plant molecular genetics.

• 1. Plant Breeding: Past, Present, and Future. 2. Who Are Plant Breeders, What Do They Do, and Why?.3. Social and Environmental Benefits of Plant Breeding.4. Defining and Achieving Plant-Breeding Goals.5. Improving the Connection Between Effective Crop Conservation and Breeding.6. Breeding for Cropping Systems.7. Participatory Plant Breeding: A Market-Oriented, Cost-Effective Approach.8. Plant Breeding Education.9. Theoretical and Biological Foundations of Plant Breeding.10. Integrating Breeding Tools to Generate Information for Efficient Breeding: Past, Present, and Future.11. Genotype by Environment Interaction - Basics and Beyond.12. Applications of Comparative Genomics to Crop Improvement.13. Perspectives on Finding and Using Quantitative Disease Resistance Genes in Barley.14. Breeding for Resistance to Abiotic Stresses in Rice: The Value of Quantitative Trait Loci.15. The Phenotypic and Genotypic Eras of Plant Breeding.16. The Historical and Biological Basis of the Concept of Heterotic Patterns in Corn Belt Dent Maize.17. Hybrid and Open-Pollinated Varieties in Modern Agriculture.18. Breeding Vegetatively Propagated Crops.19. Origins of Fruit Culture and Fruit Breeding.20. Sugarcane Genomics and Breeding.21. Improving Tolerance to Abiotic Stresses in Staple Crops: A Random or Planned Process?.22. Breeding for Resistance to Biotic Stresses.23. Breeding for Increased Forage Quality.24. Breeding for Grain Amino Acid Composition in Maize.25. Derivation of Open-Pollinated Inbred Lines and Their Relation to Z-Lines for Cyclic Hybridization.26. Breeding Maize Exotic Germplasm.27. Development of a Heterotic Pattern in Orange Flint Maize

'All chapters. are well referenced... and readable, informative and well presented'Experimental Agriculture, 2008