Abstract
Melon (Cucumis melo L.), belonging to the Cucurbitaceae family, is an economically important vegetable crop cultivated worldwide and highly valued for its fruit quality. Unfortunately, this crop is affected by several biotic and abiotic stresses that reduce yield and quality considerably. Melon breeding for fruit quality and disease resistance gained great achievements through Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology. During the last decade, a rapid and huge development of genetic and genomics resources was achieved including draft genome assemblies, and high-density genetic maps, making it possible to accelerate translational research for melon breeding. The increasing availability of high-throughput sequencing technology has the potential to develop innovative genome-based strategies for the identification of loci involved in fruit quality and disease resistance. Advancements in genomics provide new opportunities to accelerate classical breeding programs. We report here the major findings from these investigations and future perspectives in melon-breeding programs. Genomic tools used including genome editing, improvement of the melon genome assembly, identification, and molecular mapping of important genes or quantitative trait loci for disease resistance and fruit-quality traits are summarized, and the use of such knowledge in melon breeding is reported.
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Acknowledgments
The authors H.C.R and W.A are grateful to Wageningen University & Research (WUR)-Plant Breeding (Netherlands) and CRRGC-Béja (Tunisia) and also to the Orange Knowledge Programme (OKP)-Nuffic for offering the 3 months Tailor-Made Training Course ‘Application of Genomic Plant Breeding for Challenging Climate Change in Tunisia’.
A.G.C is grateful to PID2020-116055RB-C22 I+D+I project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011003 and the A11-20R project funded by the Aragon Government.
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Chikh-Rouhou, H., Abdedayem, W., Solmaz, I., Sari, N., Garcés-Claver, A. (2023). Melon (Cucumis melo L.): Genomics and Breeding. In: Singh, S., Sharma, D., Sharma, S.K., Singh, R. (eds) Smart Plant Breeding for Vegetable Crops in Post-genomics Era . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5367-5_2
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