Advances in Tomato Breeding and Molecular Research
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Plant Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 June 2024 | Viewed by 2811
Special Issue Editors
Interests: tomato genetics; genomics; breeding; fruit quality; QTL; mapped genetic resources
Interests: secondary metabolism; metabolic engineering; carotenoids; metabolomics; transcriptomics; systems biology; genome editing, network biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plant genetics; genomics; plant breeding; Solanaceae; biodiversity exploitation; fruit quality; plant biotechnology; metabolic engineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L., Solanaceae) is one of the most consumed and economically important fruit/vegetable crops worldwide, making a significant nutritional contribution to the human diet. In addition, tomato is also an established model plant for biological research, the primary model for fleshy-fruit development and composition, and a reference species for the family Solanaceae.
Several tomato features have contributed to make this important crop and its wild relatives one of the main models in classical genetics, and then a pioneer of genome analysis in plants and for the development of new molecular breeding strategies aimed at a more efficient exploitation of the rich genetic variation stored in unadapted germplasm.
The release of the tomato reference genome sequence in 2012 and the ever-improving and cost-effective sequencing technologies have triggered a rapid surge in genomic resources, which are greatly facilitating the exploitation of natural and induced genetic diversity, thus, accelerating quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), gene/allele functional identification and characterization, molecular breeding and generation of novel idiotypes, as well as other scientific discoveries. The use of advanced genetic resources, together with multi-omics approaches are revolutionizing our understanding of the regulatory networks underlying complex traits in tomato and enhancing the identification of candidate genes. In this context, hundreds of cultivated and wild tomato accessions have been re-sequenced, uncovering a vast amount of genetic variation and providing insights into the history of tomato domestication and breeding. A pan-genome of cultivated tomato and close wild relatives has revealed numerous new protein-coding genes, not captured by the reference genome. In addition, the application of third-generation (long-read) sequencing is shedding light upon the landscape of natural structural variants in tomato, demonstrating their widespread importance and potential value for future research and breeding.
The tomato research community can also benefit from vast genetic resources, including wild relatives, thousands of landraces, modern cultivars, several TILLING populations, mutant collections and populations of well-defined wild tomato introgression lines. In addition, the new genome-editing technologies have already proven to be a very powerful tool to characterize gene function in tomato and for crop improvement, also through de novo domestication of wild tomatoes. This rapidly evolving technology is expected to considerably enrich the allelic spectrum that can be employed in future breeding programs.
The deluge of resources and tools now available for the tomato clade, and largely stored in several databases, provide unprecedented opportunities to address the forthcoming breeding challenges imposed by climate change, related to evolving biotic and abiotic stress combinations, world population increase and new consumer demand for more flavorful and health-promoting tomato fruit.
The scope of this Special Issue is to bring together research articles, review articles as well as short communications that address the progress and current status in tomato molecular research and breeding, which can contribute to the development of climate-smart, highly nutritious and flavorful tomato varieties for sustainable agriculture.
The topics to be considered include, but are not limited to:
- Germplasm characterization and utilization
- Mapping and cloning of genes and QTL
- “Omics” (genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, proteomics, metabolomics, phenomics, metagenomics, etc.) and multi-omics studies
- Epigenetic regulation
- Systems biology
- Advanced breeding methods
- Development of tools for marker-assisted selection
- New plant breeding techniques for gene editing
- Genomic selection
- Domestication and evolution
- Fruit quality and yield-enhancing traits
- Primary and secondary metabolism
- Biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and their interactions
- Physiological mechanisms
Dr. Silvana Grandillo
Dr. Gianfranco Diretto
Dr. Maria Cammareri
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. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. 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
- tomato
- natural and induced variation
- genetics
- genomics
- omics
- molecular breeding
- physiology and development
- fruit quality
- biochemistry and metabolism
- biotic and abiotic stresses
