As the living standard of people rises, the quality and safety traits of plants have become increasingly important for agriculture. While quality traits are known as offering better appearance, flavor, nutrition, longer shelf life and less damage to plants, safety traits can be interpreted as plant traits that are directly or indirectly linked to human health. Intriguingly, there exists a trade-off between quality and safety traits in certain situations because plants may contain certain components that are beneficial to their own but detrimental to human health, such as anti-nutritional factors and allergens. Some other qualities and safety traits are closely related to the environment or human activities, such as the accumulation of heavy metals, antibiotic residues and the novel nanoparticles in plants.
Quality and safety traits are of particular importance for horticultural plants. Despite a better understanding of quality and safety traits that has been gained over the past decades, genetics and breeding of these traits has been still lagging other essential traits including yield and biotic/abiotic stress tolerance. A “hidden” reason is that phenotyping quality and safety traits are generally more difficult. The general goal of this Research Topic is to present an overview of the fundamental discoveries in the field of quality and safety traits in horticultural plants. Especially, it aims to publish the latest research progresses in innovating phenotyping methods, exploring genetic variation, mapping genes/QTLs controlling the traits, developing molecular markers that are linked to target traits, uncovering mechanisms underpinning the traits and breeding for new varieties. Further and expanded research of this kind is expected to provide a solid theoretical foundation as well as genetic resources for the improvement of quality and safety traits in plants.
We welcome submissions of different types of manuscripts including original research papers, reviews, and methods, including but not limited to:
• Technical innovation on phenotyping quality and safety traits of plants
• Genetics and genomics of quality and safety traits of plants
• Genetic manipulation to the improvement of quality and safety traits of plants
• Bioinformatics-based studies on the mechanisms underlying quality and safety traits of plants
Typical quality and safety traits are limited to: flavor; appearance; nutritional/anti-nutritional and allergic component contents; uptake, accumulation and degradation of toxics; synthesis and transformation of harmful substances in edible parts; deterioration of quality after harvest; shelf life.
Disclaimer: We welcome submissions of different types of related manuscripts, but descriptive studies lacking significant biological advances would be rejected without peer review.
As the living standard of people rises, the quality and safety traits of plants have become increasingly important for agriculture. While quality traits are known as offering better appearance, flavor, nutrition, longer shelf life and less damage to plants, safety traits can be interpreted as plant traits that are directly or indirectly linked to human health. Intriguingly, there exists a trade-off between quality and safety traits in certain situations because plants may contain certain components that are beneficial to their own but detrimental to human health, such as anti-nutritional factors and allergens. Some other qualities and safety traits are closely related to the environment or human activities, such as the accumulation of heavy metals, antibiotic residues and the novel nanoparticles in plants.
Quality and safety traits are of particular importance for horticultural plants. Despite a better understanding of quality and safety traits that has been gained over the past decades, genetics and breeding of these traits has been still lagging other essential traits including yield and biotic/abiotic stress tolerance. A “hidden” reason is that phenotyping quality and safety traits are generally more difficult. The general goal of this Research Topic is to present an overview of the fundamental discoveries in the field of quality and safety traits in horticultural plants. Especially, it aims to publish the latest research progresses in innovating phenotyping methods, exploring genetic variation, mapping genes/QTLs controlling the traits, developing molecular markers that are linked to target traits, uncovering mechanisms underpinning the traits and breeding for new varieties. Further and expanded research of this kind is expected to provide a solid theoretical foundation as well as genetic resources for the improvement of quality and safety traits in plants.
We welcome submissions of different types of manuscripts including original research papers, reviews, and methods, including but not limited to:
• Technical innovation on phenotyping quality and safety traits of plants
• Genetics and genomics of quality and safety traits of plants
• Genetic manipulation to the improvement of quality and safety traits of plants
• Bioinformatics-based studies on the mechanisms underlying quality and safety traits of plants
Typical quality and safety traits are limited to: flavor; appearance; nutritional/anti-nutritional and allergic component contents; uptake, accumulation and degradation of toxics; synthesis and transformation of harmful substances in edible parts; deterioration of quality after harvest; shelf life.
Disclaimer: We welcome submissions of different types of related manuscripts, but descriptive studies lacking significant biological advances would be rejected without peer review.
