Lost Crops of the Incas

Lost Crops of the Incas PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030904264X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
This fascinating, readable volume is filled with enticing, detailed information about more than 30 different Incan crops that promise to follow the potato's lead and become important contributors to the world's food supply. Some of these overlooked foods offer special advantages for developing nations, such as high nutritional quality and excellent yields. Many are adaptable to areas of the United States. Lost Crops of the Incas includes vivid color photographs of many of the crops and describes the authors' experiences in growing, tasting, and preparing them in different ways. This book is for the gourmet and gourmand alike, as well as gardeners, botanists, farmers, and agricultural specialists in developing countries.

Lost Crops of the Incas

Lost Crops of the Incas PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030904264X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Get Book Here

Book Description
This fascinating, readable volume is filled with enticing, detailed information about more than 30 different Incan crops that promise to follow the potato's lead and become important contributors to the world's food supply. Some of these overlooked foods offer special advantages for developing nations, such as high nutritional quality and excellent yields. Many are adaptable to areas of the United States. Lost Crops of the Incas includes vivid color photographs of many of the crops and describes the authors' experiences in growing, tasting, and preparing them in different ways. This book is for the gourmet and gourmand alike, as well as gardeners, botanists, farmers, and agricultural specialists in developing countries.

Lost Crops of Africa

Lost Crops of Africa PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164435
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This book is the third in a series evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes 24 little-known indigenous African cultivated and wild fruits that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists, policymakers, and the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each fruit to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each fruit is also described in a separate chapter, based on information provided and assessed by experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume II African vegetables.

Lost Crops of Africa

Lost Crops of Africa PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309176891
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Scenes of starvation have drawn the world's attention to Africa's agricultural and environmental crisis. Some observers question whether this continent can ever hope to feed its growing population. Yet there is an overlooked food resource in sub-Saharan Africa that has vast potential: native food plants. When experts were asked to nominate African food plants for inclusion in a new book, a list of 30 species grew quickly to hundreds. All in all, Africa has more than 2,000 native grains and fruitsâ€""lost" species due for rediscovery and exploitation. This volume focuses on native cereals, including: African rice, reserved until recently as a luxury food for religious rituals. Finger millet, neglected internationally although it is a staple for millions. Fonio (acha), probably the oldest African cereal and sometimes called "hungry rice." Pearl millet, a widely used grain that still holds great untapped potential. Sorghum, with prospects for making the twenty-first century the "century of sorghum." Tef, in many ways ideal but only now enjoying budding commercial production. Other cultivated and wild grains. This readable and engaging book dispels myths, often based on Western bias, about the nutritional value, flavor, and yield of these African grains. Designed as a tool for economic development, the volume is organized with increasing levels of detail to meet the needs of both lay and professional readers. The authors present the available information on where and how each grain is grown, harvested, and processed, and they list its benefits and limitations as a food source. The authors describe "next steps" for increasing the use of each grain, outline research needs, and address issues in building commercial production. Sidebars cover such interesting points as the potential use of gene mapping and other "high-tech" agricultural techniques on these grains. This fact-filled volume will be of great interest to agricultural experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, and individuals concerned about restoring food production, environmental health, and economic opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. Selection, Newbridge Garden Book Club

Neglected Crops

Neglected Crops PDF Author: J. Esteban Hernández Bermejo
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9789251032176
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
About neglected crops of the American continent. Published in collaboration with the Botanical Garden of Cord�ba (Spain) as part of the Etnobot�nica92 Programme (Andalusia, 1992)

Lost City of the Incas

Lost City of the Incas PDF Author: Hiram Bingham
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 0297865331
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
First published in the 1950s, this is a classic account of the discovery in 1911 of the lost city of Machu Picchu. In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a pre-historian with a love of exotic destinations, set out to Peru in search of the legendary city of Vilcabamba, capital city of the last Inca ruler, Manco Inca. With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in his bestselling book LOST CITY OF THE INCAS.

Lost Crops of Africa

Lost Crops of Africa PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164540
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.

The Incas

The Incas PDF Author: Terence N. D'Altroy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444331159
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
The Incas is a captivating exploration of one of the greatest civilizations ever seen. Seamlessly drawing on history, archaeology, and ethnography, this thoroughly updated new edition integrates advances made in hundreds of new studies conducted over the last decade. • Written by one of the world’s leading experts on Inca civilization • Covers Inca history, politics, economy, ideology, society, and military organization • Explores advances in research that include pre-imperial Inca society; the royal capital of Cuzco; the sacred landscape; royal estates; Machu Picchu; provincial relations; the khipu information-recording technology; languages, time frames, gender relations, effects on human biology, and daily life • Explicitly examines how the Inca world view and philosophy affected the character of the empire • Illustrated with over 90 maps, figures, and photographs

Tropical Legumes

Tropical Legumes PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.
ISBN: 9780894991929
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This National Academy of Sciences report describes plants of the family Leguminosae, all of them greatly underexploited. Some are extensively used in one part of the world but unknown elsewhere; others are virtually unknown to science but have particular attributes that suggest they could become major crops in the future; a few are already widespread but their possibilities are not yet fully realized.Most of the plants described in this book have the capacity to provide their own nitrogenous fertilizer through bacteria that live in nodules on their roots; the bacteria chemically convert nitrogen gas from the air into soluble compounds that the plant can absorb and utilize. As a result, legumes generally require no additional nitrogenous fertilizer for average growth. This is advantageous because commercial nitrogenous fertilizers are now extremely expensive for peasant farmers. This report demonstrates how farmers in developing countries, by using leguminous plants, can grow useful crops while avoiding that expense. However, the plants to be discussed here should be seen as complements to, not as substitutes for, conventional tropical crops.

Surviving Galeras

Surviving Galeras PDF Author: Stanley Williams
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 054763062X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This true, up-close account of a volcano’s eruption “artfully blends science writing and history with pure, heart-pounding action” (Mark Bowden, bestselling author of Black Hawk Down). In 1993, Stanley Williams, an eminent volcanologist, was standing on top of a Colombian volcano called Galeras when it erupted, killing six of his colleagues instantly. As Williams tried to escape the blast, he was pelted with white-hot projectiles traveling faster than bullets. Within seconds he was cut down, his skull fractured, his right leg almost severed, his backpack aflame. Williams lay helpless and near death on Galeras’s flank until two brave women—friends and fellow volcanologists—mounted an astonishing rescue effort to carry him safely off the mountain. Surviving Galeras is both a harrowing first-person account of an eruption and its aftermath, and a look at the fascinating, high-risk world of volcanology, exploring the profound impact volcanoes have had on the earth’s landscapes and civilizations. Even with improved, highly-sensitive measuring tools and protective equipment, at least one volcanologist, on average, dies each year. This book reveals how Williams and his fellow scientist-adventurers continue to unveil the enigmatic and miraculous workings of volcanoes and piece together methods to predict their actions—potentially saving many human lives. “I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent book . . . [A] riveting story.” —Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe “Popular science at its best.” —The New York Times “[A] page-turner.” —Booklist

Pseudocereals and Less Common Cereals

Pseudocereals and Less Common Cereals PDF Author: Peter S. Belton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662095440
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book, written by leading grain scientists from Europe and Africa, examines six grains that have been important food crops in various parts of the world and have the potential for much greater and more widespread use. The authors discss the chemistry, nutritional value, food processing technologies and potential applications of three true cereals: sorghum, spelt wheat and the major millet species, and three dicotyledonous pseudocereals: grain amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa. The text is of considerable importance in light of the fact that just three cereal grains account for more than 75% of all grains produced worldwide.