Background
Fruits are a major source of fiber, nutrients, and antioxidants; all essential for a healthy diet. Fruit crops play a key role in the economy of both developed and developing countries, and as such, efforts have been made to improve the quality of these crops using both conventional breeding and genetic engineering, which emerged as a major tool for introducing desirable genes in fruit crops. However, societal distrust for such technologies, coupled with misleading and false information regarding their safety, means that traditional GM technology has been difficult, or impossible to commercialize successfully. For the past two decades, genetic transformation of fruit crops has mainly focused on the enhancement of biotic and abiotic tolerance; however, there are few cases of field evaluation and commercialization of these transgenic plants worldwide.