**5. Breeding nutrient rich varieties**

Vegetables are valued for their extrinsic and intrinsic quality traits. Diet rich in vegetables provide micronutrients and health promoting phytochemicals that alleviate malnutrition. The beneficial health effects are mainly attributed to diverse antioxidant compounds such as vitamins, carotenoids, phenolics. Alkaloids, nitrogen containing compounds, organouslphur compounds etc. Although, chief long term breeding objective will continue to be increasing yield to meet the food requirement of ever increasing population, in order to ensure health security to our countrymen and multipurpose utility of the varieties for fresh market and industry suitability, it is imperative that nutraceutical, edible color and bioactive compound rich vegetable varieties are bred ensuring high remuneration to farmers. Quality in vegetables is a complex character influenced by both genetical

and environmental factors. Breeding for quality has been unsystematic and often empirical but significant progress has been made in several vegetable crops. Conventional breeding in conjunction with molecular biology has bright prospects of developing vegetable varieties high in neutraceuticals, edible colors and bioacticve compounds suitable for fresh market as well as developing functional fusions food industry.

Conventional breeding uses inherent properties of the crop, having far reaching impact on communities and has fewer regulatory constraints compared to genetically modified varieties. Breeding efforts targeting improved micronutrient content and composition began in the 1940s and 1950's, with research describing the inheritance and development of tomato breeding stocks high in pro-vitamin A carotenoids and vitamin C. Similar research leading to the development of darker orange and consequently high pro-vitamin A, carrots began in the 1960s. Since then genetic improvement to increase levels of specific micronutrient has been pursued primarily in several vegetables.

A significant genetic component of iron and zinc content of edible plant parts has been noted, but parallel investigations for calcium are not widely reported for many plant species and even less is known about magnesium. As progress is made in breeding for crop yield, mineral content usually is reduced. Furthermore, breeding for improved mineral use efficiency usually does not alter mineral content of edible plant parts. Success in breeding for higher mineral content must consider not only mineral concentration but also organic components in plants that can be abundant and either reduce (phytate, phenolic compounds) or increase (vitamin C) bioavailability. Recent studies have exhibited a broad range of calcium, iron, and zinc content across a range of Andean potato cultivars [4].

#### **5.1 Genetic resources**

Biodiversity is considered essential for food security and nutrition and can contribute to the achievement through improved dietary choices and positive health impacts. However, it is seldom included in nutrition programmes and interventions. Dietary diversity depends not only on a diversity of crops but also on diversity within crops. There is an increasing body of evidence of wide variation in nutrient contents within species, but data are lacking on nutrient composition and dietary intake for many underutilized species as well as for cultivars within species. Such information is needed both to enhance use of more nutritious cultivars in diets and to make them available for use in breeding programme aimed at increasing the nutrient content of more commonly used varieties for the same species, eliminating the need for transgenic modifications.

Genetic resources are the foundation block that are essentially required for evolving improved crop varieties when the breeder aim at adding more desirable traits to an otherwise acceptable varieties. This necessitates availability of the desired variability to the breeder within the land races, putative ancestral form, primitive cultivars and obsolete cultivars, heirloom cultivars of these crops or its wild forms and other elated species constituting primary, secondary and tertiary gene pools. The utilization of plant genetic resources to enhance the chemical composition of horticultural crops through biotechnology or conventional breeding has led to the development of varieties with enhanced levels of micronutrients, such as enhanced beta-carotene sweet potatoes, potato, carrot. Pavithra *et al*. [5] found tomato lines rich in Zn content. The elite germplasm line with high Zn content may be used to prospect candidate gene for improving nutritional value.

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*Breeding Vegetables for Nutritional Security DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95349*

transgenic approach.

**5.3 Breeding techniques**

melon has increased manifold in F1 hybrid [6].

**5.4 Advanced breeding techniques**

*5.4.1 Mutation breeding*

*5.4.2 Polyploidy breeding*

**5.2 Breeding for nutraceutical bioactive compounds**

Nutraceutical bioactive and edible colors are natural compounds which are regulated by several biochemical pathways and controlled by genetical and environmental factors. From early times people knowingly or unknowingly selected several vegetable crops for their food purpose. There are many or cultivated vegetables which are rich in these beneficial compounds. The biochemical pathway and synthesis of these compounds are controlled by one or many genes which are scattered in the available or unknown germplasm of particular vegetable crop. India is endowed with diverse agroclimatic regions ranging from tropical to temperate making it possible to grow all kinds of vegetable crops in one or the other corners of the country. Besides, there is plenty of diversity in different vegetable crops which can be exploited for development of special varieties. Through convention breeding, it is possible to develop new vegetable varieties or integrate the favorable genes for nutraceuticals, bioactive compounds and edible color into cultivated varieties, advances in molecular biology and recombinant technology have paved the way for enhancing the pace of special trait variety development using marker assisted breeding and designing new vegetable crop plants following

Breeding method in any crops depends upon the breeding system and genetic architecture resulting from natural selection as well as human selection during the course of cultivation. The genetic architecture or the pattern of inheritance of characters is another important consideration while determining the most appropriate breeding procedure applicable to any particular crops. The choice of breeding method would be largely guided by nature of gene action and relative magnitude of additive genetic variance, dominance variance and epistasis in a breeding population. The efficient breeding procedure should be effective in manipulation and selection of favorable gene combination, additive genetic variance, exploitation of dominance variance and achieving close relationship between expected genetic gain and realized progress from selection. Development of F1 hybrid is very suitable for enhancing nutraceuticals and edible colors. The beta-carotene content in musk-

In a simple way, mutation is a random or directed change in the structure of DNA or the chromosome which often result in a visible or detectable chance in specific character or trait. In self-pollinated crops, it is well known whereas in cross pollinated crops its application is more difficult and identification of the origin of the desirable genotypes is difficult. Sapir et al. [7] reported in tomato that *high* 

Polyploid can be induced due to aberration in cell division. This may occur both in the mitosis as well as in meiosis. This method can be used successfully in vegetable breeding as a means of enhancing nutraceuticals and colors in vegetables.

*pigment 1* (*hp-1*) mutation known to increase flavanoids content in fruits.
