Plant breeders and geneticists are under constant pressure to sustain and expand food production by using innovative breeding strategies and introducing minor crops, which are well adapted to marginal lands, provide a source of nutrition, and have abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, to feed an ever-increasing human population. The basic concept of this book is to examine the use of innovative methods, augmenting traditional plant breeding, towards the improvement and development of new crop varieties, under the increasingly limiting environmental and cultivation factors, to achieve sustainable agricultural production and enhanced food security.

Three volumes of the book series Advances in Plant Breeding Strategies were published in 2015, 2016 and 2018, respectively: Volume 1. Breeding, Biotechnology and Molecular Tools; Volume 2. Agronomic, Abiotic and Biotic Stress Traits and Volume 3. Fruits. In 2019, the following four volumes were published: Volume 4. Nut and Beverage Crops, Volume 5. Cereals, Volume 6. Industrial and Food Crops and Volume 7. Legumes. Recent volumes published in 2021 include: Volume 8. Vegetable Crops: Bulbs, Roots and Tubers, Volume 9. Vegetable Crops: Fruits and Young Shoots and Volume 10. Vegetable Crops: Leaves, Flowerheads, Green Pods, Mushrooms and Truffles.

This Volume 9, subtitled Vegetable Crops: Fruits and Young Shoots, consists of 12 chapters focusing on advances in breeding strategies using both traditional and modern approaches for the improvement of individual vegetable crops. Chapters are arranged in 2 parts according to the edible vegetable parts. Part I: Fruits - Bell Pepper, Chili pepper, Bitter gourd, Bottle gourd, Eggplant, Okra, Plantain, Sweet gourd, Melon, Tomato and Zucchini and Part II: Young shoots - Asparagus. Each chapter comprehensively reviews the contemporary literature on the subject and reflects the experiences of the authors. Chapters are written by internationally-reputable scientists and subjected to a review process to assure quality presentation and scientific accuracy. Each chapter begins with an introduction covering related backgrounds and provides in-depth discussion of the subject supported with high-quality color photos, illustrations and relevant data. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research directions, a comprehensive list of pertinent references to facilitate further reading, and appendixes of genetic resources and concerned research institutes.

This book series is a valuable resource for advanced students, researchers, scientists, commercial producers and seed companies as well as consultants and policymakers interested in agriculture, particularly in modern breeding technologies.