**7. Conclusion**

Vegetables are nutritional powerhouses, key sources of micronutrients needed for good health. They add diversity, flavor and nutritional quality to diets. A strengthened focus on vegetables may be the most direct affordable way to deliver better nutrition for all. Intensified vegetable production has the potential to generate more income and employment than other segments of the agricultural economy, making vegetable an important element of any agricultural growth strategy. Today neither the economic nor the nutritional power of vegetables is sufficiently realized. With a growing understanding of the linkages between dietary quality and health, policy makers must also be prepared to support additional interventions to promote vegetable consumption. Breeding for improved taste, convenience, nutritive value and consumer appeal has already contributed in increase per capita vegetable consumption with the development of products such as baby carrots, yellow and orange peppers, cherry and pear tomatoes, seedless watermelons and lettuces with different with different color, texture and flavor. Therefore conventional breeding in conjunction with molecular biology has bright prospects of developing high yielding vegetable varieties with high neutraceutcials and bio active compounds suitable to offer nutritional security.
