Cucurbit Genetics and Breeding for Variety Improvement in Post-genomic Era

Dear Colleagues,

Cucurbits (Cucurbitaceae family) are economically important vegetable crops that are grown worldwide, including cucumber, melon, watermelon, and pumpkin/squash. Other cucurbits such as bitter gourd, bottle gourd, wax gourd, luffa, and snake gourd are popular in many Asian and African countries. Cucurbit crops show extreme genetic diversity, especially due to their colorful and morphologically diverse fruits, and are important sources of nutrition and improved dietary health. In the past two decades, many genetic and genomic resources have been developed, such as genome assemblies; molecular markers; genetic maps; newly mapped genes/QTLs; valuable germplasm and mutant identification; and newly developed or improved mapping strategies, genetic transformation, and gene-editing methods. These accumulated useful resources and knowledge provide great opportunities for the variety improvement and genetic breeding of cucurbit crops.

This Special Issue offers an opportunity for both cucurbit researchers and breeders to share their current progress and innovations, and to disseminate their knowledge in the field of cucurbit genetics, genomics, traditional or molecular (MAS or gene editing) breeding, bio-informatics, biotechnologies, and phonemics. High-quality manuscripts including original research papers, review articles, and others addressing the above issues are all welcome.

Dr. Yupeng Pan
Guest Editor

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. Agronomy 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 2600 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.

• cucurbit crops
• genomics
• genetics
• gene mapping
• QTL mapping
• association mapping
• germplasm utilization
• genetic improvement
• marker-assistant selection
• gene or genome editing
• inheritance
• breeding

• Cucurbit Genetics and Breeding for Variety Improvement in Agronomy (3 articles)