BREEDING FOR FRUIT QUALITY

While fruit breeding programs have many different goals, including resistance to abiotic and biotic stress, tree architecture, precocity, and productivity, they all have in common the need to develop high quality fruit.
Fruits come in a wide spectrum of size, flavor, color, firmness, and texture.
Quality is defined differently for each fruit species and consists of many attributes.
For some species, high quality flesh texture is crisp while in others it is soft and melting.
Some fruit require a balance of acidity and sweetness while quality in others is simply defined by the degree of sweetness.
This paper reviews the physiological and genetic basis for fruit quality traits and presents various approaches for improving fruit quality by breeding.