The world’s food and agricultural programs have gradually declined into an unsustainable situation due to challenges such as increase in world population, varied agro-climatic regions, increase temperature, extreme sole-culture growing techniques, and water shortage. A considerable emphasis has been put on few staple food crops coupled with repeated dieting, food scarcity, and essential mineral deficits, frequently inducing dietary disorders. Because relying on staple crops may lead to serious food shortages in the future, we must adjust our dietary habits to include a diverse range of non-staple foods and maximize their use in order to achieve food security and reduce the nutritional gap. To assure healthy meals around the world, an authentic and reasonable strategy is presented to draw additional awareness towards variations in agricultural production techniques and dietary preferences. The EAT-Lancet declaration highlighted the importance of increasing agri-based foods to achieve sustainable health. Expanding overlooked crops with abundant genetic stocks and possibly beneficial characteristics is an approach that might meet food and nutritional security challenges. Although undervalued, pumpkin is a valuable vegetable herbaceous plant that contributes to global food and nutritional security. This crop has already been identified as a revolutionary age crop, balanced food, and more adapted to low soil and atmospheric circumstances than other major crops. This review paper focuses on the potential uses of pumpkin as an underutilized crop; diversification and development of hybrids, particularly hybridization breeding through diallel mating design; and how implementation of this “modern” technology would contribute to the breeding of the neglected pumpkin vegetable and stimulate productivity and nourish the world’s largest malnourished, deprived, and starved populations.

Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is an herbaceous crop and plays an important role as common spices and vegetables. Pepper (Capsicum spp.) is one of the most cost-effective and agricultural vegetables in the world. The most significant characteristics of peppers, as spices and in various pharmacological uses, are pungency and oleoresin (color). Cabsicum annuum L. is widely used as a medicinal herb and in the Mediterranean diet (at the present, C. annuum var. acuminatum Fingerh. and Capsicum frutescens L. are considered synonyms of C. annuum L.). Capsicum annuum includes a wide range of carotenoids including capsanthin, capsorubin, beta-carotene, cryptoxanthin, lutein, fanthophyl, and xanthophyll, and capsaicinoid. However, it remains limited in production due to the lack of development in varieties especially under severe climatic circumstances such as drought, high temperature, or salt. Some reports were provided through distinct traditional approaches for genetic improvement. A combination of traditional and molecular breeding, especially breeding for heterosis, might be a good option for developing a novel genotype for ecologically adversely affected niche adaption. This review summarizes the current chilli breeding approaches with their drawbacks and highlights some recent classical efforts for the improvement of the crop. This would be the milestone for the breeders in the planning of a successful chilli breeding program to combat the adverse ecological condition. Thus, the information gathered in this article might be considered as the cornerstone of Chilli breeders at their ongoing and sustainable future programs as well.

A full diallel mating design was used to hybridize seven pumpkin inbred parental lines, yielding 42 F1 hybrids, including reciprocals. The generated F1 hybrids, parental lines and commercial check hybrid were evaluated in two environments to investigate the per se performances, combining ability effects and magnitude of heterosis over mid-parent, better-parent and commercial check hybrids for yield and attributed sweetness, total carotenoid and antioxidant traits, using a randomized complete block design with three replications. The analysis of variance for most of the examined traits revealed highly significant differences (p ≤ 0.01) for GCA, SCA, reciprocal, maternal and non-maternal variances and their interaction with the environment. Since the inheritance of yield and its contributing fruit quality, and antioxidant traits is governed by non-additive gene action, it suggests heterosis breeding would be useful in obtaining further improvements in pumpkin. From the experiment, it was found that the paternal lines P1 (Gold Butter 315) for dry matter content and DPPH (%), P4 for total carotenoid content, P6 for fruit number per plant and P7 (Australia-1) for single fruit weight, fruit flesh thickness, yield per plant and total soluble solid were shown to be good general combiners. In respect to per se performance, combining ability effects and magnitude of heterosis over mid-parent, better-parent and commercial check, the cross P2 (928 Fuxiang) × P1 (Gold Butter 315) and P4 (Asian pumpkin) × P5 (Sarawak) for single fruit weight and yield per plant, the cross P5 (Sarawak) × P2 (928 Fuxiang) for fruits number per plant, P1 (Gold Butter 315) × P7 (Australia-1) and P1 (Gold Butter 315) × P6 (Sarawak) for total soluble solid and dry matter content, P7 (Australia-1) × P2 (928 Fuxiang) for total carotenoid content and P3 (Ser Bajadi) × P1 (Gold Butter 315) for DPPH (antioxidant) were identified to be highly significant positive specific combiners and the highest performers, and these crosses may be exploited as commercial hybrids.

One hundred and forty six inbred lines CIMMYT maize were characterized based on some morphological traits and grain yield at the experimental field of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) during 2009-10 to study the maintenance and characterization of new exotic maize inbreeds. Maximum variation was found in number of grains per row, number of cobs per row, grain yield/plant, cob length (cm), ear height (cm) and plant height (cm). On the basis of D2 analysis, 146 inbred lines were grouped into 6 clusters. The inter cluster D2 values varied from 0.974 to 6.595 which exhibited medium range of diversity present in the inbred lines. It is expected that crossing of inbred lines belonging high to medium D2 values tend to produce high heterosis for yield. Development of hybrids utilizing these genotypes has the chance to obtain higher heterosis with high performing crosses. In order to achieve more heterotic partners from 146 CIMMYT (India) inbreeds were characterized for their morphological traits and kernel yield. Selfed seeds for each of the inbreeds line also maintained for future breeding works. Development of hybrids utilizing these genotypes has the chance to obtain higher heterosis with high performing crosses.