Current horticultural production requires high-quality standards to improve the functionality of fruits and vegetables. For this reason, several research strategies have originated at pre- and postharvest production levels. The present Research Topic aimed to increase the level of understanding about the influence of internal and external factors on the quality of fruits and vegetables. This Research Topic shows five interesting investigations related to generating knowledge that might be useful for fruits and vegetable production with high-quality standards, as abovementioned. From the application of light at the postharvest stage in mango to improve the metabolite profile (Zhu et al.) to the discovery of molecular aspects related to the role of long non-coding RNAs during fruit development in highbush blueberry (Li et al.), this research displayed clear insights that adequate management of strategies using external environmental stimuli in horticultural production should effectively impact internal features that might increase the quality of fruits and vegetables.
Thus, the novel knowledge related to changes in gene expression associated with sugar contents in litchi fruit (Peng et al.) and strawberry (Wu et al.), as well as the association of specific QTLS with sugar content during P. pyrifolia fruit ripening (Jiang et al.), are clear examples that these strategies are necessary to reach the quality standards of fruit and vegetables customers are requesting nowadays.
In summary, it is clear that unraveling molecular aspects related to a phenotype of interest in plant science is highly important to propose future rationale strategies to improve quality in horticultural production. Noteworthy mentioning that future research on producing high-quality fruits and vegetables (including their nutraceutical and functional properties) will be an imperative requirement of horticultural production based on the current needs of customers. Additionally, sustainable strategies for managing external stimuli to reach this goal via the biostimulation/elicitation of interesting phenotypes in horticultural products will also be necessary in the current climate change scenario worldwide.
Statements
Author contributions
RG-G: Writing – original draft. JN: Writing – review & editing. MQ: Writing – review & editing. JL: Writing – review & editing.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Summary
Keywords
fruit quality, stress management, omic studies, vegetables production, plant biotechnology strategy
Citation
Ni J, Qian M, Li J and Guevara-González RG (2023) Editorial: Regulation of horticultural fruits and vegetables quality: internal or external factors. Front. Plant Sci. 14:1264533. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1264533
Received
20 July 2023
Accepted
24 July 2023
Published
21 August 2023
Volume
14 - 2023
Edited and reviewed by
Leo Marcelis, Wageningen University and Research, Netherlands
Updates
Copyright
© 2023 Ni, Qian, Li and Guevara-González.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ramón Gerardo Guevara-González, ramon.guevara@uaq.mx
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.