The Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia is pleased to present the first issue of Volume 36, 2018 of the agronomia Colombiana journal. This issue is composed of 10 articles on various aspects of agricultural and food research, conducted particularly in the neotropics. The areas covered in this issue are: plant Breeding, Genetic Resources and Molecular Biology (with the highest number of papers), Crop protection, Soils, Fertilization and Water Management, physiology and postharvest Technology, Economics and Rural Development, and Food Science and Technology.

In the Genetic Improvement section our readers will find a paper about hybrid vigor in Cucúrbita moschata. additionally, two studies on characterization, one of a virus and the other of soybean genotypes, are included as advances in molecular biology, although the former is closely related to crop protection.

Two papers on Crop protection, particularly on Malherbology and Entomology, are included as well. The first paper relates the application of fertilization to an herbicide in carrot. The second focuses mainly on the preference of a thrips species for cotton structures.

The Soils and Fertilization section includes two studies. The first one highlights the role of the boron-zinc interaction on the nutrition of cotton, and the second one focuses on the nitrogen fertilization of a species that has been recently cultivated, Vaccinium méridionale.

The physiology and postharvest Technology section presents a paper that evaluates the quality of the Acca sellowiana fruit, known as feijoa or pineapple guava, produced in the Department of Cundinamarca, Colombia.

The Economy and rural Development section contributes in this issue with a research on the experience of peasant markets, and how the access of small-scale farmers to market systems and commercialization has been improved by this program.

Finally, the Food Science and Technology section presents a paper that describes the response surface methodology for the fermentation optimization of Capsicum frutescens, one of the cultivated Capsicum species, along with C. anuum, C. pubescens and C. Baccatum, which are also of American origin.