**1. Introduction**

In developing countries, "population" and "food security" are the two major issues. These problems get worse with the sudden climate changes that hamper production, yield, and quality of food crops. Therefore, to keep in mind the food security for billions of peoples, an initiative is required for improving the quality and yield of important crops. Several traditional

© 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

plant-breeding practices have been carried out for producing new varieties that can withstand with such changing climatic conditions besides increasing the productivity. These timeconsuming practices could make considerable progress in crop improvement using selective germplasm, however, resulted in loss of biodiversity in the process. The recent advances in crop genomics, particularly the use of high throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, look promising to identify causal genetic factors at genome by sequencing the whole genome and transcriptome of a species. As a result, the complete gene catalogue of a crop species and functional genes in different tissues could be identified besides allowing studying the genetic pathways involved in growth and development and biochemical pathways that eventually could be correlated with the crop phenotypes [1, 2]. Furthermore, the sequence data generated in vast amount provide a basis of genetic variation such as singlenucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which ultimately provide a relationship between genotype and phenotype in different species.

The Solanaceae family comprises approximately 2500 flowering plant species under 102 genera. The family represents the third most economically important family after grasses and legumes. Among the most important plants of this family are the potato (*Solanum tuberosum*), eggplant (*Solanum melongena*), tomato (*Solanum lycopersicun*), and capsicum or pepper (*Capsicum annuum*). They serve as important food crops and consumed worldwide due to their high nutritional components. Solanaceae crops have high nutritional value due to the presence of quality proteins, mineral salts, starch, vitamins, and antioxidants. Tomato majorly contrib‐ utes to dietary nutrition globally with beneficial effects to human health mainly attributed to antioxidant compounds in the fruit such as lycopene and several other compounds such as carotenoids, zeaxanthin, and vitamin C. Capsicum fruits are rich source of metabolites that are beneficial for human health, such as carotenoids (provitamin A), vitamin C, vitamin A (which destroy free radicals), vitamin E, flavonoids, and capsaicinoids (anticancer agent). Although these compounds function as antioxidants and nutrients, they are used in traditional medicine also due to their enormous medicinal properties. Eggplant serves as an excellent source of antioxidants such as anthocyanins and several phenolics. Apart from this, it has a significant effect in reducing blood and liver cholesterol rates in humans. Worldwide, potato tubers are the principal source of starch along with proteins, vitamins, and antioxidants.

Here in this chapter, an attempt has been made to compile current research progress made based on NGS technology in four most important Solanaceae crop plants: tomato, potato, eggplant, and pepper. Furthermore, the application of NGS technology on those four crops toward translational research has been discussed.
