Genome-based breeding approaches in major vegetable crops

Vegetable crops are major nutrient sources for humanity and have been well-cultivated since thousands of years of domestication. With the rapid development of next-generation sequencing and high-throughput genotyping technologies, the reference genome of more than 20 vegetables have been well-assembled and published. Resequencing approaches on large-scale germplasm resources have clarified the domestication and improvement of vegetable crops by human selection; its application on genetic mapping and quantitative trait locus analysis has led to the discovery of key genes and molecular markers linked to important traits in vegetables. Moreover, genome-based breeding has been utilized in many vegetable crops, including Solanaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Cruciferae, and other families, thereby promoting molecular breeding at a single-nucleotide level. Thus, genome-wide SNP markers have been widely used, and high-throughput genotyping techniques have become one of the most essential methods in vegetable breeding. With the popularization of gene editing technology research on vegetable crops, breeding efficiency can be rapidly increased, especially by combining the genomic and variomic information of vegetable crops. This review outlines the present genome-based breeding approaches used for major vegetable crops to provide insights into next-generation molecular breeding for the increasing global population.