Breeding strategies for vegetable improvement: An extensive analysis

Introduction

Because they include a variety of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, vegetables are regarded as a protective food. Since the 1970s, India is currently ranked second in the world for vegetable output, having significantly boosted it, behind China, thanks to systematic effort on vegetable development that began in the 1970s (Aditika et al., 2017). Vegetables constitute a crucial component of staple diet in India where more than 40% population is vegetarian (National Family Health Survey -2015-16). Vegetables were once thought of as a luxury item, but today they are valued as a valuable part of a healthy diet and a reliable source of revenue for farmers. Compared to other agronomical crops, vegetables are often shortduration crops, which allow a farmer to harvest more crops from a given area of land. Due to urbanization, industrialization and shrinkage of agricultural land, cultivation of vegetable crops will be more economical.

 Vegetables are considered as "Protective supplementary food" as they contain large quantity of amino acids necessary for proper functioning of various metabolic processes in human body. They are an abundant supply of vitamins, minerals, phosphorus, iron, and calcium, as well as other nutrients and other nutraceutrical components that are vital to the body's continued good health. Emphasize how genetic advancements can improve the resilience, productivity, and quality of vegetable crops. Creating crop cultivars with enhanced genetic constitutions to meet a variety of human demands is the primary goal of plant breeding. Because of the rapid advancements in plant breeding, the majority of crop varieties with been generated to date share a common genetic background. This has resulted in a narrow genetic foundation, making them susceptible to both biotic and abiotic stress (Prakash et al. 2017). Even if they work well, traditional breeding techniques involve a sluggish, uncontrolled genetic improvement process that takes several generations in order to generate the desired features. Biotechnological techniques have the advantage of introducing particular genes, however, without having any unfavorable side effects (Wamiq et al. 2023).

Because of heterosis, which gives them an advantage over different parent kinds, hybrids are highly advantageous for enhancing the technological and economic elements of vegetable farming. Utilizing hybrids to their full potential is essential for tackling the new issues brought on With climate change, such lowering the disparity in access to food and nutrition. Additionally, hybrids give breeders a valuable tool to increase the potential output of vegetable crops. Heterosis has a significant effect on quality and productivity in a variety of vegetable crops, improving livelihoods by increasing production and producing high-quality goods and dietary options with better nutrition (Singh et al., 2023). Mutation breeding is generally quite beneficial for vegetable crops. Some of the modern techniques that can yield mutant varieties with novel and desirable variation of agrometrical traits are mutagenesis, mutation breeding, and the isolation of better or novel phenotypes in conjunction with conventional breeding programs. This ground is ideal for induced mutations and similar technologies, and the overall approach aids in tracking agricultural genetic variation and maintaining biodiversity (Gupta, 2019).Vegetable crops were only produced via conventional breeding methods, which relied on random mutations created either naturally or through experiments, together with interspecific sexual hybridization of plants with desirable heritable traits, until recently.

Both re-assorting and biochemical engineering, which were made feasible by improving breeding techniques through the use of randomly generated changes, have been utilized to generate entirely new opportunities and advancements (Miflin, 2000). In the future, it should be possible to improve crops by combining biotechnology with conventional breeding techniques (Dias, 2012). Technologies such as genome editing, transgenic, RNA interference, transcriptomics, and CRISPR/Cas-9 possess a tremendous deal of promise for boosting veggies' health-promoting ingredients (Singh et al., 2021).