Food security and crop production are challenged worldwide due to overpopulation, changing environmental conditions, crop establishment failure, and various kinds of post-harvest losses. The demand for high-quality foods with improved nutritional quality is also growing day by day. Therefore, production of high-quality produce and reducing post-harvest losses of produce, particularly of perishable fruits and vegetables, are vital. For many decades, attempts have been made to improve the post-harvest quality traits of horticultural crops. Recently, modern genetic tools such as genome editing emerged as a new approach to manage and overcome post-harvest effectively and efficiently. The different genome editing tools including ZFNs, TALENs, and CRISPR/Cas9 system effectively introduce mutations (In Dels) in many horticultural crops to address and resolve the issues associated with post-harvest storage quality. Henceforth, we provide a broad review of genome editing applications in horticulture crops to improve post-harvest stability traits such as shelf life, texture, and resistance to pathogens without compromising nutritional value. Moreover, major roadblocks, challenges, and their possible solutions for employing genome editing tools are also discussed.

In the present study, attempts were made to develop tolerant lines of tomato cv Solan Lalima against the pathogen Phytophthora nicotianae var parasitica causing buckeye rot, using in vitro selection approach. The highest callus survival and maximum shoot regeneration were attained on MS medium fortified with 1.0 mg/l 2,4-D and 0.5 mg/l Kn for cotyledon explants and 0.5 mg/l NAA with 1.0 mg/l BAP for leaf explants respectively. The proliferated callus was further exposed to selection pressure containing MS medium enriched with fungal culture filtrate (25%) that revealed 18.32 per cent mean callus survival and 34.59 per cent average shoot induction. The screened putative tomato tolerant somaclones against the targeted pathogen might be further subjected to molecular and agronomic evaluations including multi-location trials. Therefore, the strategy can be utilized as a promising selection method to generate disease-resistant plants of this commercially important crop.