Preface Vegetables play major role in the National developmental programmes to alleviate hunger and malnutrition. In India tremendous progress has been made in the recent past in the vegetable production and India emerged second largest producer of vegetables in the World after China. The total production of vegetables has increased from 23.4 million tones in 1961-62 to the tune of 125 million tones in 2007-08. This remarkable transformation from subsistence vegetable farming in sixties to the present commercial production has happened mainly due to huge increase in population and resultant increase in market demand mainly from the high and middle income segment of the population. However, considering the demand to meet the requirement of 300 g vegetables per capita per day for the burgeoning population with annual growth rate of 1.93 per cent and for processing industries and export market, India need to produce 150 million tones of vegetables by 2011 mainly through the enhancement in productivity. These challenges call for greater technology support to maximize productivity against unfortunate diminishing soil fertility, natural resources particularly land and water and rising cost of vegetable production. This book “Modern Technology in Vegetable Production” deals with classification of different vegetable crops, basic principles of different crop management practices and specific production technologies of 29 important vegetable crops. Unique feature of this book lay on 150 coloured photographs on four important aspects of vegetable production viz., nursery management, physiological disorder, disease and insect pests of different vegetable crops. This type of text book cum manual with extensive photographic documentation is the new addition in the teaching and demonstrative field of Vegetable science. This text book cum manual has basically been prepared for the graduate and post graduate level students of Agricultural Universities of India and abroad. Technical personnels of the commercial vegetable farms, planners, extension and development officers and even nutritionists and dieticians will also get benefit from this book. The authors appreciate their wives for their lasting patience during preparation of this book. We thank all our students for helping in taking most of the photographs. We owe to everybody whose photographs, downloaded from the internet, have been used in this book.

Introduction The book has been framed as a text book cum vegetable production manual for both under graduate and post graduate students of Agriculture/ Horticulture as well as commercial vegetable production professionals. This book has been oriented on different management practices of vegetable culture in open field condition viz., Classification of vegetable crops, Management of seedlings in the nursery, Water managent, Plant nutrient management, Pollination management, Integrated pest management, Biological management of diseases, Weed management and Production technology of different vegetable crops. Classification of vegetable crops Vegetables are defined as herbaceous plant origin material with generally low calorific value providing micronutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, fibre and induce alkaline reaction inside human body. Vegetable crops are not only botanically different but also their cultural and climatic adaptation shows wide variability. It is, therefore, necessary to classify the vegetable crops for their easy recognition. Vegetable crops can conveniently be classified “Botanically” for the purpose of vegetable breeding and according to “Method of culture” from the point of crop husbandry. Botanical classification The crops used for vegetable purpose in the world belong to 1200 species under 78 families and of them, more than 860 species under 59 families belong to dicotyledoneae and about 340 species under 19 families belong to monocotyledoneae. In the tropical and subtropical parts of the world, about 90 species of vegetable crops are cultivated, but hardly 20 of them are commercially important. In the present botanical classification, over 140 different vegetable crops under 6 monocotyledoneae and 20 dicotyledoneae families have been included.

1. Seedling management in the nursery Seedlings of many seed propagated vegetable crops like, tomato, brinjal, chillies, sweet pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, knolkhol, broccoli, Brussels sprout, kale, endive, chicory, celery, lettuce, parsley, onion, etc. are first raised in the nursery beds before transplanted in the main field although, many of these crops like, tomato, sweet pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, etc. are also direct seeded using precision seed drills in the USA, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy and other European countries. Many seed propagated vegetable crops viz., okra, peas, beans, radish, carrot, beet, turnip and all the cucurbits (e.g. bitter gourd, bottle gourd, pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, muskmelon, snake gourd, sponge gourd, ridge gourd, etc.) are conventionally grown through direct seeding in the main field. Transplant groups 1. Plants easy to transplant: They form new roots rapidly, put forth shoots rather slowly and absorb water readily e.g. beet, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, Swiss chard, lettuce and tomato. 2. Plants transplanted with moderate ease: This group replace roots and grow shoots a bit slower than the previous group and do not absorb water very efficiently e.g. celery, brinjal, onion, pepper, leek and cauliflower.

1. Potato Scientific name: Solanum tuberosum L. Family: Solanaceae Origin: South America Chromosome No.: 2n = 4x = 48 Introduction Potato is one of the four major food crops of the world and is also a very popular vegetable crop. It is extensively cultivated in China, Russian Federation, Ukarine, Poland, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, South America, India and USA. Potato was brought from Peru to Spain by the Spaniards in 1565 when it was widely grown in Spain and Italy. They were probably brought to England about 1586 by Sir Francis Drake. Potato was introduced in India in early 17th century probably by the Portuguese. Now it is one of the principal cash crops of India. Importance and use Potato is the fourth major food crops of the world after rice, wheat and maize. Being a major source of carbohydrate it is often used as a substitute for cereals. It is one of the major vegetable crops of the world and is grown in almost every country. In India, it is considered as a staple vegetable and used either alone or mixed with other vegetables. Potato is used as vegetable in various forms such as, boiled, mashed, baked, fried and cooked in sambar and different curries of vegetable, fish and meat. Potato is processed into different commercially used dehydrated, canned and fried products like, shredded potato, sliced potato, chips, flakes, French fries, finger chips, granules, disc, cubes, flour, etc. It is used for several industrial purposes such as production of starch, alcohol, dextrin, glucose, etc. Potato starch is a large grained starch and contains 25 % amylase and 73 % amylopectin and high phosphate content.

Appendix Some statistics on vegetable production in India and World Table 1. Major vegetable growing countries in the world