Genomic and biotechnological interventions for crop improvement in cucurbitaceous crops: A review

Abstract

The cucurbitaceous family has comprised with diverse economically important cucurbits. It primarily comprised of 118 genera and 825 species which being consumed as food worldwide since the domestication of the plants. In India, cucurbits are being grown throughout regions of the country including hot semi-arid and arid zones. With the advent of genomic breakthrough, a large number of genomic and biotechnological interventions have been developed in cucurbitaceous crops. The plenty of molecular markers are available in cucurbits and these markers were deployed to assess the genetic diversity and mapping of the QTLS/genes of interest. The success in development of genomic tools may happens by genome sequencing of mostly important cucurbitaceous crops such as watermelon, cucumber, muskmelon, bottle gourd, pumpkins. Transgenic and non-transgenic plants were developed in various cucurbitaceous crops by employing of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and CRISPR/CAS9 approach, respectively. Thus cucurbitaceous crops have been considerably exploited at molecular level and biotechnological interventions were developed for crop improvement. However, a comprehensive report in cucurbitaceous crops regarding genomic and biotechnological developments is not available in public domain. Therefore, in the present review, we have collected the information related to genomics and biotechnology in cucurbits and emphasized on some successful interventions.