- Aliki Xanthopoulou,
Harry S. Paris,
Ioanna Tsompanoglou,
Alexios N. Polidoros,
Ifigeneia Mellidou
Ioannis Ganopoulos
The Cucurbitaceae provide food and sustenance almost the entire world over, in economically advanced areas as well as resource-poor areas, and encompass over two dozen crop plant species. Worldwide, the mostly widely grown and consumed cucurbits are watermelons, melons, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins. As with all crops, yield quantity and quality of cucurbits is determined by genetics, the environment, and management, and interactions among these three variables. Like other crop plants, the growth, yield, and quality of cucurbits is adversely affected by abiotic stresses. This overview is devoted to the possibility of developing cucurbits more tolerant of abiotic stresses by manipulating their genomes. Descriptive background information is provided on cucurbit plants and their distribution in the wild and under cultivation, breeding achievements, and the abiotic stresses affecting cucurbits. The presentation then discusses the limitations of traditional cucurbit breeding for stress tolerance, diversity analysis of cucurbits, association mapping in cucurbits, gene identification through genome-wide analysis, genome-wide association studies for identifying quantitative trait loci, prospects and limitations for marker-assisted breeding for stress tolerance in cucurbits, and the rather limited progress and insights gained so far from research on cucurbit genomics. Much more research in genomic designing for abiotic stress tolerance of cucurbits needs to be conducted, by screening of germplasm collections for abiotic stress tolerance and by discovering the target genes and their locations within the genome.
