This compendium includes the diseases and pests of all the commercially grown types of Beta vulgaris: spinach beet and chard, table or red beet, fodder beet and sugar beet. However, most of the examples in this book are taken from the sugar beet crop. This second edition, like the first, has been written by US researchers and agronomists who specialize in beet within universities, the USDA and beet-sugar processing companies, and has been well edited to ensure that each short section is treated in a uniform way. The compendium includes almost 400 colour photographs and devotes 57 pages to diseases of the growing crop, 9 to nematode predation and 27 to arthropod pests. It includes short sections on nutrient disorders, herbicide toxicities and post-harvest deterioration of sugar beet. The book starts with brief sections on the history of beet production and breeding for disease resistance. The claim is made that beet production is unique because it was responsible for the introduction of crop rotation into European monocultures of small grains. This is a serious exaggeration as it ignores the contribution of ‘Turnip’ Townshend, among others, to the agricultural revolution during the 18th century.

The treatment of diseases and nematode parasites is very comprehensive: each of the 42 diseases and 7 nematodes has subsections devoted to symptoms, the causal organism, life cycle and epidemiology, disease management and a bibliography. Problems caused by arthropods are dealt with in rather less detail. Herbicide-induced damage and mammalian pests are dealt with very sketchily and birds are not mentioned at all (perhaps birds do not feed on beet in the USA, but they can be serious pests of European beet crops). The section on nutrient disorders is divided according to symptom expression: this can cause difficulties to anyone using the Compendium for the identification of problems because the symptoms of nutrient deficiencies can change drastically as the deficiency develops. For example, a characteristic but severe symptom of boron deficiency is death of the apical meristem, but boron is not mentioned in the section that deals with growing-point damage.

The second edition of this compendium is a great improvement on the first, especially because the text has the colour photographs embedded within it. However, a few of these pictures do not match the description in the text (for example Figs 135 and 180) and some others (e.g. Fig. 152) are of little help when trying to identify the cause of a problem. The descriptions of disorders are accurate, as one would expect, but in most cases they do not include hints on how best to distinguish one disorder from another with similar symptoms. This is a pity because these hints can only be provided by the real experts, those who wrote the individual sections of this book.

The Compendium of Beet Diseases and Pests is intended primarily for advisors and farmers in the United States, but it includes many diseases and disorders that are only found elsewhere in the world, so it can be a valuable source of information wherever beet is grown. However, outside the USA it should not be used in isolation because some beet pests are not included. Readers from outside the USA may be surprised to find that the CIA can provide maps of the distribution of wild species of the genus Beta (Fig. 2). This book is very good value at only US$ 65 and it has a place in the plant clinic here at Broom's Barn Research Centre.