After a monoculture phase, it is becoming an unavoidable necessity to diversify perennial crops (cocoa, rubber, palm or coconut oil) in humid tropical areas. Why and when should these diversification processes take place? What type of planter is involved? What are the constraints to diversification? How do public policies and private actions interfere? The authors answer these questions through fifteen case studies, mainly located in Africa and South-East Asia, thereby providing a better understanding of the economies of family plantations and their recent changes.

Already a reference in this field, the guide updates and adds sixty new species and ninety photos, thereby offering a panorama of these garden, glasshouse and nursery pests. From rose aphids via all the butterflies and their caterpillars, it lists, details and illustrates everything you need to know: scientific classification, damage caused, distribution area, favourite hosts, biology and control methods.

It will win over entomologists, researchers, technicians, experts in horticulture and fruit growing and also amateur gardeners.

Rupicolous environments include rock faces, coastal cliffs, screes, bare and stony soils of proglacial surfaces and also quarries and ore dumps. This book presents the riches of rupicolous environments, explains how they operate as ecosystems in relation with their media, explains their heritage interest as a species repository and innovation laboratory, discusses how to restore them and advocates their integrated and sustainable management.

The work presents a sociological and historical analysis of transformations in French agriculture since the Second World War. The author shows that some farmers continue to invent unusual productive forms that withstand the on-going extension of industrial agriculture. The work has six chapters and can be a medium for teaching the history of French agriculture.

Based on archive documents and surveys, the author analyses the transformation of farmers, both men and women, since the beginning of the last century. It addresses the influences of post-war modernisation and group farming in the 1960s. It examines the changes in certain farming populations, pig breeders, organic farmers and also women. Lastly, the author presents the effects of a reconstructed work area (rurbanisation, for example) on today's farmers.

This work plots the crazy saga of natural rubber production on American soil since the end of the 19th century to date. Between quarrels of enthusiasts, agronomic experimentation, lobbying by oil industrialists and political about-turns, the guayule and a few other latex plants have shown the potential for founding a new industry entirely separate from the rubber tree that currently provides the world with natural rubber almost exclusively.

Partly instrumentalised by the policies, the nature conservation movements and the economists, ecology is the vector for many perceived ideas. The ecologists themselves fuel the debate dramatising the future of the planet, in the belief that they are giving legitimacy to their discipline. But are the resources used for ecological research in line with the anxieties and appeals from society and managers? This work is the testimony of an ecologist at the heart of this multi-discipline research.

Genetic plant improvement aims to unite in a same genotype the variety and the maximum number of favourable genes for the traits to be improved. But which tools are used to achieve this? This book answers this question and shows that, since domestication, plant breeding has always been governed by genetic engineering.

A bibliographical summary that assesses changes in protective flora to improve the microbiological quality of foods. This work lists the bacterial species and the mechanisms brought into play to control undesirable flora, mainly pathogens. The breeding criteria for effective protective flora and examples in the main food industries are presented.

Fruit of the photosynthesis of plants, the biomass is an essential resource for humans, supplying them with food, energy and materials. With its three sources (forest, crops and waste), the energy-biomass is restricted by the production capacity of soils and its competition with its other uses. Could it therefore contribute to the growing energy needs of humanity and to the energy transition that must take place to reduce our oil and gas consumption substantially?