Dear Colleagues,

Characterization of vegetable genetic resources takes many forms. The goals of such studies are often crop- or taxon-specific and tailored to provide information on the presence and/or the range of unique, and typically agriculturally important, characteristics within a defined set of plant materials. The procedures used to accomplish such goals may be quite simple (i.e., collection of descriptor data on fruit maturity or color) or more technically complex (i.e., using next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches to characterize collections for their diversity or to identify a core collection). Similarly, approaches applied for the conservation of vegetable crops germplasm are also crop- and taxon-specific and include, for example, defining practices facilitating field or greenhouse production of seed, the development and use of specialized in vitro or cryogenic procedures for longer-term maintenance or pathogen elimination, and the use of global positioning system (GPS) data to locate/conserve ecologically and/or taxonomically unique plant materials, among many others. This Special Issue invites reports of recent efforts to conserve and characterize vegetable crops germplasm. Relevant articles would include (but are not limited to):

• Use of novel approaches or technologies to improve the efficiency of, or reduce the resources associated with, seed production of vegetable crops germplasm and/or their wild relatives,
• Use of emerging technologies, such as high-throughput phenotyping or the use of robotics, to capture characterization data in the field or greenhouse,
• Applications of artificial intelligence in efforts characterize or conserve vegetable crops germplasm,
• Use of molecular/NGS approaches to characterize collections or populations of vegetable crops genetic resources,
• Studies characterizing vegetable crops germplasm collections using traditional (morphological data) approaches,
• Studies and technologies used to identify the occurrence and distribution of vegetable crop species and their wild relatives, and
• Selection of vegetable crop core collections.

Prof. Dr. Robert Jarret
Dr. Maarten Van Zonneveld
Guest Editors

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• germplasm
• genetic resources
• genebank
• biodiversity
• vegetable
• characterization
• conservation