Brinjal: Breeding and Genomics

Abstract

Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) also known as eggplant is an important solanaceous vegetable crop grown across tropical and subtropical regions of the world. India is the centre of origin of the crop, large diversity in the morphology of fruit and plant type exists in the country. Also, a large number of wild relatives is being utilized in breeding programs as a source of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. Conventional breeding programs have focused on improving plant type and yield through the development of high-yielding varieties and hybrids. More recently, breeding for stress tolerance and enhanced nutritional content has gained importance. Genetic inheritance studies, mapping, molecular tools are enriching the crop improvement work. Of late, the availability of high-quality genome sequences has spurred functional analysis at the genome level augmenting molecular tools for marker-assisted selection. In the present article, attempt has been made to highlight the improvement work carried out from relevance of the crop diversity to genomic-level knowledge advancement. Future prospective in brinjal improvement having relevance in Indian context is also highlighted.