**1. Background**

Fruits and vegetables are generally known to contain important vitamins, fiber, essential minerals, and vital bioactive compounds that possess health benefits such as antiinflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anticancer properties [1]. These compounds can help protect against chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. However, the composition of fruits and vegetables with regard to these compounds is dependent on plant genotypic, environmental, and management factors [2–4]. By nature, the production of fruits and vegetables requires high input and intensive management practices compared to other crops. As such, these crops are fragile and easily succumb to various environmental stressors during production and post-harvest processing, handling, and storage [5,6]. Consequently, collaboration between industry, researchers, and policymakers to develop or adopt novel technologies and techniques to improve fruit and vegetable crop growth, productivity, and harvest and edible qualities is paramount.

This Special Issue (Fruit and Vegetable Production) of the journal *Plants* focuses on the entire chain of fruit and vegetable production including post-harvest and marketing topics under field and greenhouse production systems. Therefore, it is not surprising that the information provided by this Special Issue will further strengthen the theory that effective collaboration between researchers and stakeholders across various food systems jurisdictions will continue to grow within these areas of research. This Special Issue comprises a collection of 12 peer-reviewed manuscripts covering basic and applied themes of crop response to organic amendments, biostimulants, irrigation, physiological stress, metabolic stimulation, and novel technologies for the efficient characterization of specialty crops, quality assessment, and cultivar evaluation.
