Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Trees

Fruit tree breeding research has primarily focused on the discovery of new economically valuable varieties in order to fulfill different consumer and industrial demands, improving fruit trees’ tolerance to environmental challenges, increasing their postharvest life, and developing cost-effective cultural approaches. The breeding of woody fruit trees is restricted by a variety of drawbacks, including long breeding cycles from the seed to fruit-bearing stage, long developmental stages that increase the costs of growing individuals to maturity in the field, and, frequently, severe heterozygosity impeding theoretical breeding methods. The expansion of biotechnology and the increasing prevalence of genomics have created new prospects for countering these limitations in the breeding of major fruit species. This Special Issue is a collection of 11 important research works focusing on commercially important fruit crops, such as apple, peach, pear, kiwi, persimmon, blueberry, and red bayberry. Readers from all over the globe are expected to greatly benefit from this Special Issue.