The development of fruits without fertilization is known as parthenocarpy. Parthenocarpy improves the fruit quality, processing attributes, production and productivity of vegetable crops like tomato, cucumber, watermelon etc. Absence of seeds can enhances the shelf life of the fruits, allowing a better conservation, fruit set in adverse climatic conditions, early and offseason production of vegetable crops. Therefore, it is important to ensure yield stability regardless of environmental conditions. Breeding of new cultivars with the ability to develop fruits without pollination or any artificial stimuli is a promising approach. Parthenocarpic vegetables can be natural or can be induced artificially by various methods like, use of plant growth regulators, distant hybridization, mutation, use of irradiated pollen, alternation in chromosome number, gene silencing, gene modifications and genome editing tools. Therefore, present review is focused on genetics, nature of gene action, mapping of QTLs and various breeding methods to induce parthenocarpy in vegetable crops.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.