Fruit Breeding is the eighth volume in the Handbook of Plant Breeding series. Like the other volumes in the series, this volume presents information on the latest scientific information in applied plant breeding using the current advances in the field, from an efficient use of genetic resources to the impact of biotechnology in plant breeding. The majority of the volume showcases individual crops, complemented by sections dealing with important aspects of fruit breeding as trends, marketing and protection of new varieties, health benefits of fruits and new crops in the horizon. The book also features contributions from outstanding scientists for each crop species. Maria Luisa Badenes Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVIA), Valencia, Spain David Byrne Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

Raspberry is a globally-significant soft fruit crop, with increasing interest to consumers due to its versatility and health-related constituents. In this background context, it is therefore timely to consider the present and future status of the raspberry crop, particularly with the advances in the use of molecular tools and plant phenotyping to improve our understanding of improving crop quality and fruit yields. Since the 1980s a wealth of fundamental genomics and metabolomics resources have been developed for soft fruits including linkage maps, physical maps, QTLs and expression tools. However, a number of serious and emerging challenges exist for the raspberry industry, including the plants’ ability to resist major pest and disease burdens and the impact of climate change on crop production, specifically water use and water availability for soft fruit crops. This book aims to address some of these challenges by updating the information known about this important crop, its health value, the major pest and diseases which affect raspberry and approaches for their control, and the speed and precision offered by selective breeding programs by the deployment of molecular tools and linkage maps for germplasm assessment. Understanding the genetic control of commercially and nutritionally important traits and the linkage of these characteristics to molecular markers on chromosomes is the future basis of plant breeding. We will also introduce the opportunity to fast track breeding by improving the speed of phenotypic selection by utilizing imaging sensor technologies, thereby reducing the cost of years of field assessment through developing this knowledge into markers linked to key fruit traits. The chapters of this book will span the knowledge gained from the collaborations between growers, plant breeders, plant physiologists, soil scientists, geneticists, agronomists and physicists which is essential to achieve progress in improving productivity and a sustainable industry.

This book fully integrates the conventional and biotechnological approaches to fruit crop breeding. Individual chapters are written on a wide variety of species covering all the major fruit crops in one volume. For each crop, there is a discussion of their taxonomy and evolution, history of improvement, crossing techniques, evaluation methods, and heritability of major traits and germplasm resources. Also discussed are the most recent advances in genetic mapping and QTL (quantitative trait loci) analysis, marker assisted breeding, gene cloning, gene expression analysis, regeneration and transformation. Patenting and licensing issues are also covered.

This book examines the development of innovative modern methodologies towards augmenting conventional plant breeding for the production of new crop varieties, under the increasingly limiting environmental and cultivation factors, to achieve sustainable agricultural production and enhanced food security. Two volumes of Advances in Plant Breeding Strategies were published in 2015 and 2016, respectively; Volume 1: Breeding, Biotechnology and Molecular Tools and Volume 2: Agronomic, Abiotic and Biotic Stress Traits. This is Volume 3: Fruits, which is focused on advances in breeding strategies for the improvement of individual fruit crops. It consists of 23 chapters grouped into three parts, according to distribution classification of fruit trees: Part I, Temperate Fruits, Part II, Subtropical Fruits, and Part III, Tropical Fruits. Each chapter comprehensively reviews the modern literature on the subject and reflects the authors' own experience.

Germplasm resource and exploration, maintenance and preservation. Breeding techniques: pollen and seed management. Hybridization and handling seedling populations. Mutation breeding, ploidy manipulations, tissue culture and embryo culture selection: breeding strategy, response to selection and somatic selectoin and chimeras. Breeding for specific objetives: disease resistance, insect, mite and nematode resistance, resistance to environmental stress, adaptation to specific climatic and soil environments, quality, rootstocks, mecanized harvest and fruitfulness and productivity. Testing and release: testing and cultivar evaluation, cultivar release and protection, certification and supporting phytopathology and data collection, analysis and retrieval.

Plant breeding has undergone a period of very rapid and significant development in recent years and the area of fruit breeding is no exception. This book provides a balanced, up-to-date and comprehensive account of the developments in the field of breeding tropical and subtropical fruits. It offers not only the theoretical and applied aspects of breedings fruits but also provides an authoritative manual of the conventional and new techniques used for increasing efficiency of crop improvement programmes. In specific chapters the book deals with crop taxonomy, genetic resources, floral biology, breeding objectives, inheritance patterns and information on new improved cultivars/hybrids.