Toward an art of genomic selection in vegetable breeding

Abstract Genomic selection (GS) is a powerful strategy for accelerating genetic gain in plant breeding. While in recent years GS has been widely adopted in breeding programs for agronomic crops, its implementation in vegetable breeding has been comparatively limited. Vegetable breeders face many unique challenges that impede the direct translation of GS implementation strategies from agronomic breeding programs. These challenges include the large number of traits that are important for cultivar development, the difficulty in quantitatively phenotyping many of these traits, especially those related to quality and sensory attributes, and the diversity of reproductive strategies and biological features represented among different vegetable crops. Successful vegetable breeders have been able to efficiently develop new varieties with improved quality and productivity, while constantly adapting to shifting market demands and growing methods, by complementing their understanding of heredity with elements of creativity and intuition‐based decision‐making. Like earlier advances in genetics and statistics that were once viewed as only theoretical, we feel GS can become an additional part of breeders’ routine selection strategy and, ultimately, another element of the “art” of vegetable breeding.