VEGETABLE BREEDING

India is the second largest producer of vegetables in the world. Wide varieties of vegetables are being grown under different agro-climatic regions. There is demand for good quality vegetables from public; hence crop improvement of vegetables with good quality and high nutraceutical value is need of the hour. Now vegetables are not only restricted to fresh consumption and table purpose, processing is also highly remunerative industry. Vegetables are used for production of different processed products and it is a separate segment which is totally different from fresh market. Hence emphasis has to be given for the improved varieties and hybrids suitable for processing segment. Vegetable breeding has opened to a new paradigm and currently getting attention among fraternity of Vegetable Science stream. Knowledge and information of origin, distribution, genetic resources, botany breeding objectives, breeding methods are prerequisite for any vegetable improvement. The recent updated information is covered in this book with respect to genetic resources, genes, breeding objectives as per segment of vegetables. We sincerely acknowledge the contribution of authors, publishers and International Union for the Protection of New Varities of Plants (UPOV), whose publications have been used for the preparation of this manuscript. We acknowledge that the reproduction is published with the permission of the International Union for Protection of New Varities of Plants (UPOV), the owner of the copyright. We hope the information given here in this book would receive due response from different stakeholders like students, faculties, researchers and other readers.