Contribution of Genomics to Fruit Quality and Postharvest Biology

Dear Colleagues,

The global food crisis has triggered the elevation of food security as a priority issue on the international policy agenda. Although several factors in tandem have triggered this crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ominously emphasized the crucial fragility of the global food system, in terms of quantity and quality. The situation forced the scientific and agricultural communities to change their global strategy and regulatory framework for food improvement, raising issues for the modernization of breeding approaches. Accordingly, novel genomics-based approaches for plant breeding and genetics research that are able to accelerate and enhance breeding efficiency have emerged as powerful tools in the context of rapid trait improvement in fruit species.

Thus far, the development of genomic tools for studying fruit development, ripening, and quality have mostly been carried out using tomato as a model fruit. There is a need to apply genomic methods in other fruit species. Efforts should also be directed towards the elucidation of the function of the genes in planta. So far, among the several hundreds of genes whose expression is altered during ripening, very few have well-characterized functions. The number of genes for which a picture of the regulatory events is available is extremely limited.

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences will focus on presenting the actual and potential contribution of genomics to the understanding of the fruit ripening process and to the genetic improvement of fruit quality and storability to increase consumer acceptance and market value for sustaining production.

Dr. Islam El-Sharkawy
Prof. Jayasankar Subramanian
Dr. Sadanad A. Dhekney
Guest Editors

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