Genome Modification Approaches to Improve Performance, Quality, and Stress Tolerance of Important Mediterranean Fruit Species (Olea europaea L., Vitis vinifera L., and Quercus suber L.)

Abstract

In the last decades, the interest on traditional Mediterranean fruits highly increased, not only due to the constant demand of consumers for new crop alternatives but also due to the identification in such species of molecules with important properties for human health (e.g., resveratrol from grapes and oleuropein from olives). Efforts to improve the production capacity and fruit quality, as well as the resistance to biotic and abiotic stress, in such fruit species, were achieved by plant breeders using mainly classical breeding approaches (e.g., selection, hybridization, and mutagenesis); nevertheless, breeding support by plant tissue culture techniques, by marker-assisted selection, as well as by genome modification was also used. Here we will present the state of the art related with the production of transgenic plants in three Mediterranean fruit species with important impact on the economy, olive, grapevine, and cork oak. The achievements, problems, and future perspectives will be discussed.