Dear Colleagues,

Apple (Malus domestica L. Borkh), with its wide diversity of climatic adaptation, is the most widely planted tree fruit of the temperate zone and one of the most widely cultivated in the world, covering about 5 million hectares and with a production of more than 75 million metric tons. Apple is a representative model plant of a fruit tree in multiple biological processes, such as fruit set and development, flower development, fruit quality, environmental response, postharvest physiology, grafting, thinning, and domestic evolution, which would not be well reflected in, for example, Arabidopsis, rice, tomato, and other model plants. Apple research has undergone great improvements in recent years, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, and this species genome has been released and widely improved.

Over the last few decades, researchers’ attention on this species has grown exponentially, as evidenced by the increasing number of scientific publications, especially dealing with its basic biology. However, there are still open questions and challenges in this fascinating field, such as apple domestic evolution in quality and stress resistance from the wilds, pome fruit development and flesh quality formation, grafting and rootstock scion interaction, bud differentiation and dormancy, and life cycle regulation. On the other hand, in the pos- genomic era, the analysis of gene functions in apple is required for agricultural utilization and molecular breeding.

In this Special Issue, articles (original research papers, reviews, opinions, perspectives and methods) that focus on Malus biology, including germplasm resources, genome, evolution, development, genetics, stress, fruit quality, nutrition, cultivation and postharvest at all levels comprising transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and epigenome studies and studies on biochemistry, physiology, genes, proteins, metabolites, stress biology, fruit development, fruit quality, grafting biology, flower development, and postharvest biology are most welcome.

Prof. Dr. Mingjun Li
Prof. Dr. Ting Wu
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. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

• Malus
• apple
• genetics
• stress
• quality
• development
• gene function