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Agronomy
Special Issues
Novel Approaches and Discoveries towards Quality Improvement of Fruits and...
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Novel Approaches and Discoveries towards Quality Improvement of Fruits and Vegetables

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2017)

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Esther Van der Knaap

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture and Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
Interests: Tomato genetics, development, domestication and crop improvement
Prof. Dr. Cecilia E. McGregor

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture and Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
Interests: watermelon breeding and genetics; disease resistance; fruit quality

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fruit and vegetables provide essential nutrients in the human and animal diet. Improved quality of the produce, in terms of secondary metabolite composition, produce dimensions and shelf life are increasingly important criteria for plant breeders. New genotyping and phenotyping technologies have made selections easier and more reliable. This Special Issue of Agronomy is focused on the genetic basis of quality traits in fruit and vegetables, as well as recent efforts to improve these traits in cultivar development.

Prof. Dr. Esther van der Knaap
Prof. Dr. Cecilia E. McGregor
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 

Keywords

  • fruit and vegetables
  • genomic selection
  • breeding
  • phenomics
  • post-harvest quality
  • nutritional quality
  • flavor and taste
  • firmness, texture, size, shape

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

2049 KiB  
Article
Effect of Constitutive miR164 Expression on Plant Morphology and Fruit Development in Arabidopsis and Tomato
by Flor De Fátima Rosas Cárdenas, Yolanda Ruiz Suárez, Rosa María Cano Rangel, Valentín Luna Garcia, Karla Lorena González Aguilera, Nayelli Marsch Martínez and Stefan De Folter
Agronomy 2017, 7(3), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy7030048 - 15 Jul 2017
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 9274
Abstract
Several miRNAs are conserved in different plant families, but their abundance and target genes vary between species, organs, and stages of development. Target genes of miRNAs are mostly transcription factors, involved in the control of many plant developmental processes, including fruit development. MiR164 [...] Read more.
Several miRNAs are conserved in different plant families, but their abundance and target genes vary between species, organs, and stages of development. Target genes of miRNAs are mostly transcription factors, involved in the control of many plant developmental processes, including fruit development. MiR164 is a conserved miRNA, highly expressed in fruits, and is validated to target a subset of genes of the NAC-domain transcription factor gene family. The objective of this work was to analyze the phenotypic effects of the constitutive expression of miR164 during the life cycle of Arabidopsis and tomato. MiR164 overexpression (164-OE) lines for Arabidopsis and tomato were generated and analyzed during plant development. The constitutive miR164 expression showed that miR164 affected the morphology of Arabidopsis and tomato, and it affected the transition from the vegetative to the reproductive phase in Arabidopsis. Moreover, the miR164 overexpression affected the time required for each developmental stage of tomato fruit. These results suggest that miR164 plays general and specific roles during development in Arabidopsis and tomato, including fruit development, which could be exploited for the improvement of traits of agronomic interest in important species. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Approaches and Discoveries towards Quality Improvement of Fruits and Vegetables)
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2427 KiB  
Article
Applying New Technologies to Transform Blueberry Harvesting
by Fumiomi Takeda, Wei Q. Yang, Changying Li, Andris Freivalds, Kiseok Sung, Rui Xu, Bo Hu, Jeffrey Williamson and Steven Sargent
Agronomy 2017, 7(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy7020033 - 04 May 2017
Cited by 30 | Viewed by 10722
Abstract
The growth of the blueberry industry in the past three decades has been remarkably robust. However, a labor shortage for hand harvesting, increasingly higher labor costs, and low harvest efficiencies are becoming bottlenecks for sustainable development of the fresh market blueberry production. In [...] Read more.
The growth of the blueberry industry in the past three decades has been remarkably robust. However, a labor shortage for hand harvesting, increasingly higher labor costs, and low harvest efficiencies are becoming bottlenecks for sustainable development of the fresh market blueberry production. In this study, we evaluated semi-mechanical harvesting systems consisting of a harvest-aid platform with soft fruit catching surfaces that collected the fruit detached by portable, hand-held, pneumatic shakers. The softer fruit catching surfaces were not glued to the hard sub-surfaces of the harvest-aid platform, but suspended over them. Also, the ergonomic aspect of operating powered harvesting equipment was determined. The pneumatic shakers removed 3.5 to 15 times more fruit (g/min) than by hand. Soft fruit catching surfaces reduced impact force and bruise damage. Fruit firmness was higher in fruit harvested by hand compared to that by pneumatic shakers in some cultivars. The bruise area was less than 8% in fruit harvested by hand and with semi-mechanical harvesting system. The percentage of blue, packable fruit harvested by pneumatic shakers comprised as much as 90% of the total, but less than that of hand-harvested fruit. The ergonomic analysis by electromyography showed that muscle strain in the back, shoulders, and forearms was low in workers operating the light-weight, pneumatic shakers that were tethered to the platform with a tool balancer. The new harvesting method can reduce the labor requirement to about 100 hour/hectare/year and help to mitigate the rising labor cost and shortage of workers for harvesting fresh-market quality blueberries. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Approaches and Discoveries towards Quality Improvement of Fruits and Vegetables)
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