Vegetable Landraces: The “Gene Banks” for Traditional Farmers and Future Breeding Programs

Crop diversity of vegetable species is threatened by the current homogenization of agricultural production systems due to specialization of plant breeders and increasing globalization in the seed sector. With the onset of modern agriculture, most traditional vegetable cultivars were replaced by highly productive and often genetically uniform commercial breeds and hybrids. This led to the loss of landraces, especially in countries with a super-intensive agriculture. This chapter aims to highlight the importance of keeping and using vegetable landraces as valuable sources of genes for traditional farmers, but also for future breeding processes.