The book contains 27 chapters from a symposium in 2003 in Mexico City honouring A.R. Hallauer. Four chapters relate to his work on breeding methods and genetic resources in maize. The others, including one co-authored by Dr Hallauer, are reviews covering the range of plant breeding activities from the training of breeders to the consequences of their actions. There is some emphasis on maize breeding in North America, but separate chapters deal with sugarcane, fruit, and other clonal and forage crops. All chapters – several by noted authorities – are well referenced and most are readable, informative, and well presented.

That apart, the book may become historically important because it contains contemporary opinions whilst plant breeding is undergoing two major changes.

Firstly, breeders work on the phenotype, expecting to change the genotype. But breeding now includes technologies which change the genotype in order to improve the phenotype, leading one author to call for a ‘profound philosophical transformation’. Nevertheless, several chapters describe the synthesis of old and new, notably suggesting that studying the molecular basis of gene expression might help explain persistent problems in understanding interactions between genes and the environment.

Secondly, the breeding of major crops in industrialized countries has been part of the agricultural industry, supported by research from academia, but is now largely performed by corporations around a core of molecular geneticists. Associated with this, breeding may be polarising into ‘big’ and ‘small’: readers can compare accounts of the benefits of genotype-based breeding (including transgenesis), with phenotype-based breeding run collaboratively between scientists and farmers.