Spanish-English horticultural dictionary

Spanish-English horticultural dictionary

154 which is more convenient for the readers outside the U.S.A. This is a highquality textbook, with a high level of production. On some topics, only...

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154

which is more convenient for the readers outside the U.S.A. This is a highquality textbook, with a high level of production. On some topics, only general information is given, such as "greenhouse tomato production" (p. 324) which is a very complex system needing high production skills. It could not be carried out just using this brief description, even when combined with "hydroponic systems" (p. 133). More details are needed on environmental conditions, temperature, light, water and soil conditions in relation to growth and development, instead of those on photosynthesis and respiration pathways, the Krebs cycle and the double helix of the DNA molecule, which would have been more suitable in a specialised biochemical textbook. Some morphological descriptions of the plants and the growth and development of the edible organs could well have been added to each group of vegetables. Some English names and the botanical classifications of oriental vegetables are sometimes confused due to the translation of local names. They are not mistakes by the author. In comparison with other textbooks on vegetable crops, this book summarised vegetable science at a new level. H.C. Thompson's Vegetable Crops, for example, which has been in general use for very many years in the United States, contains many experimental results and references over a wide range of production problems. Vegetable production textbooks written by Russian authors usually contained more biological characteristics and environmental conditions, and little information on economy and marketing, while those published in Japan usually contain more experimental data and figures, and details of cultural practices, and those published in China usually pay more attention to descriptions of the morphological characteristics of the plants and local cultural practices and cultivars, with little discussion of mechanization and marketing. SHU-HSIEN LEE

Department of Horticulture Zhejiang Agricultural University Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P.R. China SPANISH-ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Spanish-English Horticultural Dictionary, with English-Spanish Index. D.O'D. Bourke, L. Fanjhul and A.J. Rendell-Dunn (Compilers). Technical Communication No. 36, 1987, C.A.B. International Bureau of Horticulture and Plantation Crops, East Malling, Maidstone, Kent, U.K., 148 pp. price U.K. £16.00, U.S.A. $30.00, elsewhere £17.00, ISBN 0 85198 572 6.

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The compilers hope that this dictionary will make it possible for anglophones to read the many publications in the Spanish language. For the Spanish-speaking people who read English publications, an English-Spanish index is added. I consider this to be very important, because I know by personal experience that there are a lot of Spanish-speaking research workers who cannot read English sufficiently well to understand publications in the English language. Personally, I even consider that there is more need for an EnglishSpanish than for a Spanish-English dictionary. Unfortunately, the English-Spanish index only contains a few of the English words given in the Spanish-English dictionary. One example; in the Spanish-English dictionary I found for retofio: (new) sprout, shoot, sucker, ratoon, volunteer, plant, but looking in the index I did not find retono as translation for sucker, nor for shoot. The dictionary, in particular, contains a lot of plant names, names of insecticides and plant diseases. In several parts of Latin-America different names are used for the same plant and also the same name is used for different plants. In the dictionary, many of the local Spanish names are mentioned. Unfortunately, only a few "technical" terms and names of modern culture methods are given. Lana de vidrio--glasswool--is mentioned (but glasswool is not in the index! ), but the horticulturally much more important substrate lana de piedra--rockwool--is not mentioned at all. Of course, no dictionary is ever complete, however specialized it may be. A.A. Steiner Hertenlaan 12 6705 CB Wageningen The Netherlands