Development and Characterization of High-Quality Crop Genotypes

Dear Colleagues, 

Consumers are increasingly searching for high-quality horticultural crops that can be introduced into the human diet for bioactive compounds, vitamins, and minerals. Thus, breeding efforts aimed at developing novel genotypes with high nutritional value may have direct impacts on human health. Using a wide range of plant modification strategies, including conventional breeding and genetic engineering, more nutritious crop varieties with higher amounts of antioxidants and nutritional compounds can be generated. The development of novel genomic and genetic resources, including wild crop relatives, could promote the achievement of this objective. Moreover, many genes and pathways important for nutrient accumulation in the edible parts of crop plants have been described, and their potential uses for biotechnological applications have been demonstrated. We are interested in manuscripts demonstrating how different strategies can be applied to increase the nutritional quality of food crops, ranging from genetic engineering to new and existing plant breeding technologies. This Special Issue will highlight recent progress on different topics related to breeding and applied biotechnology designed to increase the nutritional value of crops. We invite researchers to contribute with original studies and reviews covering all the above mentioned aspects related to the design and development of new crop genotypes with high nutritional quality and to their physiological and biochemical characterization. Studies that encompass the relation between nutritional quality and crop physiology and genomics will also be considered.

Prof. Dr. Maria Manuela Rigano
Prof. Dr. Amalia Barone
Guest Editors

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