Fruit in focus: A sampler platter of research

Abstract

Few plants have captured the imagination and palettes of the world like those which bear edible fruits, providing novel insights into the relationships between plants and people. This special collection of reviews and research highlights the unique challenges and opportunities we face when studying, breeding, and working to conserve these species. The 18 articles included here examine fruiting plants across diverse scales and topics, from the genome to global sustainability, and from fruit morphology to species' geographic distributions, yet they showcase only a fraction of the immense evolutionary, phenotypic, and genomic diversity present in fruit‐bearing plants. Across the special collection, our hope is to not only offer highlights of fruit diversity and importance but also provide a taste of future research in this area. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Keywords

• crop wild relatives
• fruit crops
• genomics
• high‐throughput phenotyping
• plant conservation