Genetic Diversity of Vegetables in Arid Region

Vegetables are of short duration, have higher productivity and give more return per unit area, besides giving nutritious food to human being and can be fitted in different farming systems. Increasing population, people's purchasing power, variety in tastes, growing awareness towards nutritional security resulted in quantum jump in demands of vegetables in arid region accelerated the cultivation. The Indian sub continent, one of the Vavilonian centres of origin of crop plants endowed with wide range of diversity in several vegetable crops, the distribution of variability in the major agro-climatic zones of India. Good amount of variability observed in the collected germplasms from different parts of arid, semi arid regions. Genetic diversity found in vegetable crop species offers a great opportunity for successful breeding of improved cultivars with added value and desirable resistance to diseases, pests. The Arid Western Region falls in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent possesses wide range of diversity of a number of vegetable crop species.