Editorial: Functional Genomics in Fruit Trees: From 'Omics to Sustainable Biotechnologies

"Fruit trees are economically important species and, as long-living plants, represent an important challenge to understand adaptation to environmental stresses. Detailed functional analyses are often difficult in woody species, because of their biological features and the recalcitrance of some species to plant transformation and/or regeneration, impediments that greatly limit the use of standard genetic and biotechnological approaches for functional genomics studies or plant breeding. Specifically, fruit tree species are difficult to study at genetic and molecular levels (1) because of their perennial nature, (2) the limited information on gene identity and function, and genetic markers directly associated to the control of a character, (3) the unavailability of well-defined molecular genetic linkage maps and (4) the poor development of mapping population and map-based studies, that are generally rather complex in woody plants. Over the last decade, the sequencing of several genomes, coupled with rapid advances in bioinformatics, provided powerful tools for detailed molecular studies on crop plants other than traditional model species. The availability of sequencing data is only a starting point since bioinformatics approaches are not sufficient to define gene roles. To deepen this knowledge, it is necessary to understand how thousands of genes can interact each other to define the structure of a plant and how the metabolic pathways in which they are involved contribute to plant development and adaptation to the environment."