Inaugural Editorial

Fruits are the reproductive organs of many higher plants. They are a natural source of food for animals and birds and were a vital source of food for collection by humans prior to agrarian settlements. With intensive domestication and breeding efforts, fruits have become increasingly important sources of dietary fibre, vitamins, and antioxidants that help fight many health disorders, such as diabetes. Fruits are also grown as cash crops, lifting millions of rural people out of poverty in developing countries. U-pick orchards are also recreational activities in suburban areas. In all these ways, fruits play a pivotal role in our everyday lives, and therefore, advancing fruit research is vital to improving our quality of life.

Because of their importance in natural systems and in our daily life, fruits and fruit crops have been research subjects for centuries. Research in fruit crops in the last decade has greatly accelerated with the empowerment of genomics and other unprecedented new technologies, despite challenges in perennial nature, longer life cycles, and more complex genomes in general. This rapid advance is evident by the fast expansion of overall literature in the past 20 years (Fig. 1). Despite many journals that publish research in fruit crops, there is still room for a more specialized journal dedicated to publishing research with focus on fruit crops, especially in areas of more fundamental and translational research.

Figure 1.  Number of publications in 2000 to 2019. The key words used to search in Web of Science: TS = (fruit or apple or pear or peach or hawthorn or cydonia oblonga or persimmon or jujube or Japanese apricot or plum or apricot or cherry or grape or kiwifruit or strawberry or fig or pomegranate or citrus or loquat or longan or litchi or Myrica rubra or bayberry or mango or banana or avocado or papaya or pineapple or coconut or lemon or breadfruit or areca or chestnut or raspberry or olive or durian or guava or sweetsop).

I am excited that Maximum Academic Press (http://www.maxapress.com/journal/frures) launched a new journal, Fruit Research, an international, open access journal for global fruit crop research community, and I am honored to be invited to serve as the founding Editor-in-Chief (EiC). Fruit Research’s mission is to publish the most interesting and impactful research discoveries in basic and translational research for all fruit crops worldwide. Fruit Research will be a community journal, and therefore, service to the community will be another core mission. In addition to the ‘traditional’ essential function of a journal − managing the peer review process and achieving high quality research papers − I want to ensure you that we will provide added services, including hosting trainings on writing scientific papers, conducting research, performing peer reviews for graduate students and postdocs, offering community seminars, and holding conferences, symposia, and workshops. Fruit Research will not just be a journal, but also a community for researchers to cooperate and collaborate to advance fruit research and train future fruit scientists. Our goal is to develop the journal into one of the premier professional journals in fruit science, in horticulture, and in plant biology in general.

Fruit Research will publish original research articles, reviews, new methods of recent developments in specific subject areas, and forward-looking perspectives. Scope includes, but is not limited to, genomics, genetics and breeding, evolution and domestication, cellular and molecular biology, biotechnology, biochemistry, physiology, and environmental biology of all fruit plants in temperate, subtropical, and tropical regions. Fruit Research will periodically publish special issues to embrace new and emerging trends in fruit sciences.

The publishing business over the past two decades has transformed itself from the traditional subscription-only viewing system into open access, online viewing. Fruit Research will embrace the “open science” philosophy. We will strive to have a vigorous and speedy peer-review process. Once the paper is accepted, the paper will be sent to production and will be published in a matter of days, rather than months, so the papers will be disseminated quickly to the scientific community. We will also actively share your valuable research work on various social media outlets to reach broader viewers and to expand your research influence.

Finally, it is my great honor to work with a team of Associate Editors (AEs) who have graciously accepted my invitation with dedication and passion. They are not only empowered to handle manuscripts and make sound recommendations on each manuscript, but also are given privilege to propose and organize special issues in their expertise areas. They will be my close advisors as we collectively develop this new journal. As the journal develops, I will expand the editorial board to better serve the authors and readers. I also pledge to work with our authors, reviewers, and publisher for a vigorous and speedy peer-review process by reducing the bottlenecks in the publication process to make the publishing experience easier, faster, and more pleasant.

Let me conclude by asking you in the fruit research community to join our efforts in launching Fruit Research. Please submit your manuscripts, review our manuscripts with speed and fairness, and offer your suggestions on how we can better serve you and the community. With all of us working together, we can surely build Fruit Research into a high-quality journal that we are all proud of.