About this Research Topic

Background

Horticultural crops such as fruits, vegetables, medicinal, aromatic, and ornamental plants are used to diversify the human diet, improve health, and enhance our living environment. Horticultural crops, particularly fruits and vegetables, are excellent sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, fibers, carbohydrates, and organic acids required for the human diet whereas ornamentals are worth of aesthetic nature. Pre and post-harvest quantitative and qualitative losses in horticulture crops have always been a concern for farmers and consumers. The yield and nutritional quality of horticultural crops are significantly limited by abiotic and biotic stresses. Furthermore, the perishable nature of horticultural produce results in huge post-harvest loss of fruits and vegetables, particularly in developing countries. Therefore, developing approaches and tools for improving pre- and post-harvest quality attributes and stress resilience is critical for sustainable crop production and diversification.

Classical breeding approaches such as hybridization breeding and mutation breeding are commonly used for trait improvement in horticulture crops for decades. However, the time and labor-intensive nature of these classical breeding programs restrict their usage to achieve global sustainable agricultural programs. The advent of molecular genetics has paved the way for employing modern biotechnological tools in the improvement of horticultural crops. Over the last few decades, genetic engineering and molecular breeding technologies have been used tremendously to develop many horticultural crops with improved and desired traits.

Further, the emergence of new biotechnological and genome engineering tools such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindrome Repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) have revolutionized the trait improvement of agricultural crops including the horticultural crops. Moreover, technological advancements in omics such as genomics, proteomics metabolomics, and phenomics have significantly boosted the genetic improvement of horticultural crops. Therefore, the experimental landscape in this area must be broadened by taking advantage of various breeding strategies and the advancement of biotechnological tools.

The goal of this research topic is to provide insights into recent advancements in the field, particularly trait improvement for stress resilience, nutritional quality, and post-harvest attributes using biotechnological tools. We welcome original research, review/mini-review articles, methods, and opinion articles in the following research areas, but are not limited to these only:

- Genetic advancements in horticulture crops for desired and improved traits
- Improving postharvest stability and pathogen resistance of fruits and vegetables
- Enhancing abiotic and biotic stress resilience in horticultural crops using modern breeding tools
- Omics advancement of horticultural crops
- Interventions of computational tools in plant breeding, genetic and genome engineering
- Biofortification, metabolic engineering, and development of nutritionally enriched fruits and vegetables 
- Applications of emerging genome editing tools for improvement of horticultural crops
- Hi-tech horticulture (Hydroponics/aeroponics/vertical gardening) for crop production and improvement.

Keywords: fruit, vegetable, medicinal, horticulture, ornamental plant, antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, fibers, carbohydrates, organic acids, abiotic, biotic stress, stress resilience, biotechnology, genetic engineering, omics, genomics, proteomics

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