Integrating Hybrid and Molecular Breeding as Approaches in Vegetable Breeding Strategies

Considering the daily importance of vegetables in the human diet, breeders are expected to find faster and more accurate methods of creating new varieties of vegetables. To more precisely meet the demands of vegetable producers and consumers, breeders are increasingly combining hybrid and molecular techniques. The integration of hybrid and molecular breeding represents a logical step towards the development of efficient vegetable breeding strategies. For this purpose, the aim of this review is to point out several representative vegetable species (tomato, pepper, cabbage, lettuce, and cucumber) the possibilities, advantages, and disadvantages of the integration of hybrid and molecular methods of breeding. While conventional breeding techniques are based on selective breeding, mass selection, pure line selection, backcrossing, and hybrid breeding that exploit the effects of heterosis, advanced techniques such as phenomics, molecular markers, genome-wide association studies, and next-generation sequencing facilitate the identification and selection of desirable traits and improve nutritional quality. Breeding a new and promising vegetable cultivar can take 10 to 15 years before it becomes available for commercial production. Molecular techniques definitely represent a faster and more precise part of this mentioned integration. However, classical-hybrid breeding still develops stable, uniform, and marketable varieties without the high costs and significant access of advanced laboratory infrastructure, and without the regulatory barriers that accompany genetic engineering.