Tropical crops such as cassava, sweet potato, sugarcane, papaya, pineapple, and banana are indispensable resources for daily life by providing staple food and tropical fruit. According to FAO, the global cassava starch market reached 6.8 Million metric tons in 2020, and global trade in tropical fruits has acquired an aggregate export volume of 8 million tonnes in recent years. With global climate change and population growth, an increase in the production and quality of these tropical crops can meet our need to guarantee health, food security, and agro-industrial development. Although breeding of the above tropical crops is frustrating due to the time-consuming process, low efficiency in flowering and seed setting, and complexity in genetic nature, significant progress in sequencing tropical crop genomes and developing compatible plant transformation protocols with gene editing tools have been made. 

This special issue aims to provide a platform for researchers working on tropical crops to publish their recent studies related to molecular breeding using genome editing tools. The special issue can accept high-quality original research papers, full reviews, mini-reviews, and short communications.

Topics include but are not limited to:

●  Improvement in plant regeneration and transformation

●  Methods and tools development for genome editing

●  Gene identification and function verification

●  Trait improvement

Guest Editors

Dr. Peng Zhang, Professor, Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, CAS, China

Dr. Yehua He, Professor, South China Agricultural University, China

Dr. Shuzhen Zhang, Professor, Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology, CATAS, China

Dr. Wentao Shen, Professor, Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology, CATAS, China

Dr. Juhua Liu, Professor, Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology, CATAS, China

Submission Deadline

The deadline for manuscript submissions is 31 December 2023. However, we can accommodate extensions on a case-by-case basis. All papers will be published as open access articles upon acceptance.

Submission Instructions

Please submit the full manuscript to Tropical Plants via our Online Submission System. All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors to submit manuscripts is available on the For Authors page.

Additionally, please choose the topic of this Special Issue when submitting, and mention it in your cover letter. For further inquiries, please contact Guest Editors:

Peng Zhang (zhangpeng@cemps.ac.cn)

Yehua He (heyehua@hotmail.com)

Shuzhen Zhang (Zhangsz2007@163.com)

Wentao Shen (shenwentao@itbb.org.cn)

Juhua Liu (liujuhua@itbb.org.cn)