Germplasm and Breeding Innovations in Cucurbitaceous Crops

Dear Colleagues,

Cucurbitaceous crops, including watermelons (Citrullus lanatus), melons (Cucumis melo), cucumbers (Cucumis sativus), and pumpkin and squash (Cucurbita spp.) crops, are one of the most genetically diverse plant families and contain several health-promoting substances and play a vital role in sustaining human life. With the worsening of the global environment, the fast growth of the global population, and the improvement in people's living standards, the market demand for high-quality cucurbitaceous crops in large quantities is expanding dramatically. There is a wide genetic variation among cucurbitaceous crop genetic resources for diverse qualitative and quantitative attributes for effective variety design, product development, and marketing. The rapid development of omics techniques and bioinformatic algorithms provides convenience for functional gene mining and breeding innovations. Utilizing the abundant germplasm and improved varieties basic for the development of Cucurbitaceous Crop industrialization.

Over the past decade, germplasm and breeding innovations in cucurbitaceous Crops have exhibited rapid development. Research and application areas are mostly concentrated on the development of a new variety of resources by conventional and modern breeding methods, like BSA, Mutmap, EMS, etc., and the obtainment of new germplasms by genetic transformation and gene editing technology in cucurbitaceous crops is also an effective and efficient approach.

This Special Issue on “Germplasm and Breeding Innovations in Cucurbitaceous Crops” welcomes the submission of review and research papers or short communications on the following topics: germplasm, genome sequence information, evolutionary relationships, and functional genes associated with important agronomic traits in cucurbitaceous crops. Advances in these research fields are applicable to basic research in cucurbitaceous crops, and promote the applications of these resources and methods.

Prof. Dr. Huasen Wang
Dr. Li Miao
Guest Editors

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• cucurbitaceous crops
• germplasm
• breeding
• evolutionary relationships
• functional gene