Advances in the Breeding of Aromatic and Medicinal Crops

Dear Colleagues,

A variety of medicinal and aromatic crops provide essential raw materials for culinary, cosmetic, industrial, and medicinal purposes, as well as for flavoring and fragrance uses all over the world. For example, at present, more than one-third of clinical drugs are derived from medicinal plant extracts or their derivatives. Therefore, the types, levels, and yield of bioactive compounds are critical factors that determine their quality. The increasing demand for these natural products has led to higher costs. The determination of how to increase the yield of these natural products has become an urgent issue that should be resolved as soon as possible in order to satisfy the higher demand and achieve sustainable applications.

Due to their commercial importance and increasing demand, in recent years, research on genetics and the breeding of medicinal and aromatic crops has gradually increased and made some progress, especially in the enhancement of bioactive traits and productivity integrated with modern molecular breeding techniques.

In this Special Issue, we aim to report the most recent research and progress, and exchange knowledge on any aspect related to the breeding of medicinal and aromatic crops. By thus attracting the attention of peers, this Special Issue will promote scientific and technological workers to invest in the molecular breeding of medicinal plants, facilitating their introduction and improving crop production.

We welcome high-quality research contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following aspects: germplasm collection and evaluation; the selection of elite cultivars; molecular marker development; genetic improvement related to quantity and quality; and breeding applications of traditional breeding technology or/and modern molecular breeding, propagation and protection for commercially important medicinal and aromatic crops.

This Special Issue invites reviews, research papers, communications and short notes. There is no restriction on the length of the papers, but a traditional research paper is the main format for the contributions that this Special Issue welcomes.

Dr. Jianhua Wang
Dr. Zhenqiao Song
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. 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.

• germplasm
• molecular marker
• genetic linkage map
• QTL
• molecular-marker-assisted breeding
• GWAS
• SNP
• propagation
• yield
• bioactive compound
• quality