Breeding Vegetables for Protected Cultivation: A Review

Abstract

Protected cultivation of vegetable crops was given a high priority and developed very rapidly during the past 15 years in India. Initially, vegetable cultivars commonly used for open field production were also started to grown under protected conditions. Despite various measures, many problems arose due to unfavorable ecological conditions in protected environments. Since the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, breeding of vegetable cultivars for protected conditions has been carried out by taking advantages of both conventional methods and biotechnological tools. One of the main research efforts include screening and evaluation of breeding materials for tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Another effort focused on the creation and development of new breeding materials (variety, cultivar or breeding line) for protected conditions by selection, introduction, crossing and biotechnological methods, including isolating from popular F genotypes, wide crosses, tissue and 1 cell culture, protoplast regeneration, gene transfer techniques, molecular marker assisted breeding and many other approaches. As most hydroponic cultivation and grafting tools are carried out inside the protected conditions, more cultivars adapted to this type of culture are also urgently needed.