Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.1
3.0
Journals
Horticulturae
Special Issues
Genetic Breeding and Quality Improvement of Vegetable Crops
share announcement

Genetic Breeding and Quality Improvement of Vegetable Crops

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Vegetable Production Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 August 2026 | Viewed by 964

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Alexis Marchesini

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Institute on Terrestrial Ecosystems, National Research Council, 05010 Porano, Italy
Interests: forest genomics; conservation genetics; phylogenetics; eDNA metabarcoding; ecological niche modeling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Rosario Paolo Mauro

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Ambiente (Di3A), University of Catania, Via S. Sofia 100, 95123 Catania, Italy
Interests: agronomic management in horticulture and floriculture; breeding of horticultural crops; crop physiology; vegetables quality; secondary metabolites
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Vegetable crops play a crucial role in human nutrition, food security, and agricultural sustainability.

Growing challenges—including structural changes in global economies, resource limitations, evolving consumer demands, erosion of agricultural biodiversity, and climate change—underscore the urgent need to accelerate innovation in breeding strategies to improve the quality, yield, resilience, and nutritional value of vegetable crops.

This Special Issue, entitled “Genetic Breeding and Quality Improvement of Vegetable Crops”, aims to showcase original research articles, reviews, and case studies reporting recent progress and novelty results in plant genetics and breeding strategies, including conventional genetic, genomic and transcriptomic approaches.

Contributions may cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- inheritance analysis of agronomic traits;

- marker-assisted selection (MAS);

- identification of key genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs), genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and other genomic analysis focusing on quality traits;

- gene expression analysis (RNA-seq);

- whole-genome sequencing of both nuclear and organellar genomes of vegetable crops, when unveiling information on quality and nutritional traits;

- gene editing of quality traits;

- integrative analysis of genetic, high-throughput phenotyping and multi-omics data.

Dr. Alexis Marchesini
Dr. Rosario Paolo Mauro
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Horticulturae 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 2200 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

  • vegetable crops
  • genetic breeding
  • trait inheritance
  • vegetable genomics
  • quality traits
  • nutritional quality
  • genome editing
  • marker-assisted selection
  • OMICS technologies

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

16 pages, 5582 KB  
Article
CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Mutagenesis in Tomato Targeting the DE-ETIOLATED1 Gene
by Aurelia Scarano, Fabio D’Orso, Gabriella Dono, Marcos Fernando Basso, Barbara Felici, Andrea Mazzucato, Federico Martinelli and Angelo Santino
Horticulturae 2026, 12(4), 428; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae12040428 - 1 Apr 2026
Viewed by 651
Abstract
Tomato high pigment-2 (hp-2dg, hp-2, and hp-2j) mutant lines are characterized by mutations in the DE-ETIOLATED1 (SlDET1; Solyc01g056340) gene. SlDET1 is responsible for encoding a nuclear protein that acts as a negative regulator involved in [...] Read more.
Tomato high pigment-2 (hp-2dg, hp-2, and hp-2j) mutant lines are characterized by mutations in the DE-ETIOLATED1 (SlDET1; Solyc01g056340) gene. SlDET1 is responsible for encoding a nuclear protein that acts as a negative regulator involved in light signaling, repressing photomorphogenesis. These tomato mutant lines are known for increased levels of antioxidant pigments in fruits, such as flavonoids and carotenoids, compared to the wild-type fruits. In this study, CRISPR/Cas9, followed by the non-homologous end joining mechanism of repair (NHEJ), was used to target the SlDET1 gene and investigate whether the effects of these mutations could mimic the effects of hp-2 mutant lines, improving the nutritional features of tomato fruits. Our results indicated that mutations generated by CRISPR/Cas9 NHEJ in the hp-2 and hp-2j regions (exon 11) resulted in significant changes in the SlDET1 coding and protein sequences. These mutations caused a low survival rate of edited sprouts and regenerated plants with a very compromised capacity of allelic heritability of these mutations for the following generations. However, regenerated plants containing these site-specific mutations in the SlDET1 gene showed higher levels of phytochemicals in ripe fruits. Furthermore, these edited plants also showed an upregulation of structural genes involved in the synthesis of these biocompounds. Although the SlDET1 gene could be considered an interesting target gene for the nutritional improvement of tomato fruits, our results showed that mutations within its exon 11 are quite critical and can induce severe perturbations in plant physiology, with a compromised possibility to develop new stable edited lines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Genetic Breeding and Quality Improvement of Vegetable Crops)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop