Breeding vegetable crops for higher yield, superior quality, climate resilience and export competitiveness

Abstract

Vegetable crops are essential for food, nutritional and livelihood security, providing affordable sources of vitamins, minerals and nutraceuticals, while generating employment and supporting farm diversification and rural development. Increasing population, urbanization, income, demographic changes and declining arable land are expected to intensify the demand for vegetables. India, therefore, needs to increase annual vegetable production substantially to meet future demand. According to the second advance estimates for 2025–26, vegetable production is expected to reach about 221.0 mt from 11.879 mha. Meeting future demand requires sustained genetic improvement for higher productivity, superior quality, wider adaptability, climate resilience, pest and disease resistance, resource-use efficiency, extended shelf-life, processing suitability and export quality. The development and utilization of robust genetic emasculation technologies and doubled-haploid lines should be prioritized to accelerate parental-line development, harness heterosis and reduce the cost of hybrid seed production. Development of climate-resilient cultivars with wider adaptability is essential for ensuring year-round availability of fresh vegetables under changing environmental conditions and dietary patterns. To lessen import dependence and promote exports, special emphasis is required on processing/nutraceutical traits in tomato, chilli, potato, carrot, onion, bitter gourd, pea and beans, as well as export-oriented traits in onion, potato, pea, chilli, gherkin, okra, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower and baby/sweet corn. The limitation of land resources can be partly addressed by breeding vegetable crops with indeterminate growth habits that efficiently utilize the vertical space of protected structures, thereby enabling prolonged harvesting of quality produce and higher productivity per unit area. Furthermore, grafting and rootstock breeding are emerging as important approaches for coping with extreme biotic, climatic and edaphic stresses, particularly in solanaceous and cucurbitaceous crops. Overall, addressing crop-, region- and industry-specific priorities will require integrated breeding strategies combining classical and cutting-edge technologies, speed-breeding facilities and precise phenotyping to develop high-yielding, quality-oriented, climate-resilient and market-specific vegetable cultivars that meet the future needs of consumers, growers, processors and exporters.