Breeding of Ornamental Crops: Annuals and Cut Flowers

Flowers and other ornamental plants are used for all occasions to meet consumers demands preferably novel flowers traits, e.g., fragrance, flower color and shape, early flowering, less water consumption, long shelf-life. The worldwide floricultural industry is worth over 50 billion Euros and can serve as a ‘food security’, socio-economic impact, and generate employment. Ornamental industry is regarded as one of the fastest growing farm industries. This industry is sustained through novelty, thus there is increasing demand on plant breeders in both public and private sectors to fulfil consumer’s needs. Biotechnological approaches such as genetic transformation, genomics, nanotechnology, and gene editing are well suited for designing custom-made novel traits of flowers benefiting both ornamental and cosmetic industry. Moreover, micropropagation is well exploited commercially for large-scale plant production along with vertical and digital farming, and artificial intelligence especially by the floriculture industry. This book focuses on advances in breeding strategies of diverse range of ornamental plants. It consists of 2 parts, Part I Flowering annuals and Part II Cut flowers. Each chapter, contributed by eminent authors, is devoted to an individual ornamental species or a group of related species. It provides an in depth understanding of modern breeding strategies including traditional methods and biotechnological approaches. Topics covered in each chapter, in relation to the subject species, include current cultivation practices and challenges, germplasm biodiversity and conservation, traditional breeding, molecular breeding, tissue culture applications, genetic engineering and gene editing, mutation breeding, hybridization, and future research directions. Major concepts are illustrated with color photos.