Consumer-oriented exploitation and conservation of genetic resources of pumpkins and squash, Cucurbita

Abstract

Pumpkins and squash, Cucurbita species, are valued horticultural products almost everywhere. They have been cultivated and subjected to consumer-oriented selection for thousands of years. Under this consumer orientation, they have been improved culinarily and diversified into the wonderful array of fruit sizes, shapes, and colors that are seen today. Besides their value as food items, pumpkins and squash are associated by people with abundance, warmth, sexuality, and life itself. My current objective is to provide a succinct perspective on the process of consumer-oriented exploitation of pumpkin and squash genetic resources. I briefly review the etymology, taxonomy and gross morphology of Cucurbita plants. A view is presented of how gathering, nurturing, domestication and cultivation of Cucurbita, species-specific and consumer-driven, maintained some of the parallels among species but also magnified the phenotypic differences among them. At greater length are considered the differences in resource allocation required for the preferential consumer-driven production of mature versus young fruits. Environmental effects, abiotic and biotic, are briefly mentioned, as are some of the potential benefits of biotechnology, genetic engineering, mapping, genomics, and gene editing as cognates for breeding. Finally, I consider the processes and needs for collection, maintenance, characterization, and availability of Cucurbita genetic resources and the dangers imposed by under-informed administrators in academia and cavalier governmental regulatory statutes toward future consumer-oriented improvement of pumpkins and squash.

Tracing back the origin of pumpkins (Cucurbita pepossp.pepoL.) in Mexico

“…pepo, for chloroplast regions and microsatellite loci, might relate to: its ample distribution and its wide range of morphological diversity [25]; the fact that C. pepo ssp. pepo is one of the earliest domesticates in America [6,7,14,22,[70][71][72] followed by a rapid process of population expansion and diversification after domestication, as supported by our starshaped haplotype network, archaeological records and linguistic evidence [5,6,18,73]; and because at least two independent domestication events and admixture among domesticated lineages [26,27,31,37] are involved in this taxa, as is supported by our assignment test. Moreover, high levels of genetic variation may relate to Andres's [37] hypothesis of multiple incipient domestications in the history of C. pepo.…”

“…In the genus Cucurbita, all species are diploid with 2n = 40 [4]. This genus is composed of 20 taxa, including five independently domesticated taxa [5][6][7][8][9][10], of which Cucurbita pepo ssp. pepo is the best studiedmainly because of its economic importance (i.e.…”

Recent and Historical Gene Flow in Cultivars, Landraces, and a Wild Taxon of Cucurbita pepo in Mexico

“…The admixture analysis (Figure 3B) showed that the improved cultivars have the highest assignment probability to the blue clusters, as well as the presence of crossed individuals with the other genotypes. The latter may occur because different cultigens of C. pepo have been crossed to breed improved cultivars (Ferriol and Picó, 2008), as well as for the introduction of genes from other pumpkin species for genetic improvement (Whitaker, 1962;Whitaker and Davis, 1962;Paris et al, 1988;Holdsworth et al, 2016;Castellanos-Morales et al, 2019), especially to produce disease-resistant crops (Robinson and Shail, 1987;Cohen et al, 2003;Formisano et al, 2010;Paris, 2018).…”

Pursuing the Potential of Heirloom Cultivars to Improve Adaptation, Nutritional, and Culinary Features of Food Crops

“…Ensuring conservation and sharing of such heritage germplasm and associated knowledge should be the priority. Adopting policies that foster consumer-oriented utilization and conservation of heritage germplasm could help ward off the dangers imposed by institutional and governmental restrictions on crop genetic resources [43].…”