Major Agronomic Characters and Chemical Constituents in Cassava

Cassava is a very important staple food for more than 500 million people following maize, rice, wheat, and potatoes. Recent estimates suggest that its roots provide 8% or more of the minimum calorie requirement for more than 750 million people. Besides, use for animal feed, starch, and bio-fuels with cassava is increasing tremendously in many countries, being under consideration as a very important starch or energy crop in developed countries. To cope with these increasing national and international demands for cassava in various sectors, many trials of research and analysis are still being required, especially in terms of agronomic perspective, in major cassava production countries like Indonesia. This book, therefore, provides some leading data for further information to screen cassava varieties with higher yield, higher DM and starch content, and lower HCN in storage roots. The analysis should help shed some light on the current hot interest in cassava works, and should be especially useful to who are in agronomy, breeding, physiology, and genetics of tropical starch and energy crop fields, or anyone else who may be considering studying tropical tuber crops for research efforts.