Editorial: Functional Genomics in Fruit Trees: From 'Omics to Sustainable Biotechnologies

Abstract

This Research Topic of Frontiers in Plant Science collects 8 manuscripts, focused on fruit crops of high commercial interest, such as bayberry, blueberry, pear, grapevine, citrus, and walnut. The breadth of solutions and approaches that omics offer us today, and the applications and perspectives that are looming over a short time horizon, are illustrated with a particular focus on fruit qualitative traits, related to firmness and post-harvest (Cappai et al.), ripening (Honaas et al.), and lignin accumulation (Cao et al.), on improving knowledge on secondary metabolites, such as phenolic compounds (Saxe et al.), as well as on investigating earliest responses to pathogens (Wei et al.). Moreover, the Research Topic illustrates a technological application path from whole-genome sequencing (Wu et al.) to the resequencing (Tanaka et al.), to achieve the ultimate objective of modulating genes using the New Breeding Techniques (Salonia et al.).