Abstract
Bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria(Molina) Standl.] is an important multi-purpose cucurbit crop grown for its leaf, fruit, and seed. It is widely cultivated and used for human consumption in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) providing vital human nutrition and serving as food security crop. There is wide genetic variation among bottle gourd genetic resources in Africa for diverse qualitative and quantitative attributes for effective variety design, product development, and marketing. However, the crop is under- researched and -utilized, and improved varieties are yet to be developed and commercialized in the region. Therefore, the objective of this review is to provide the progress on bottle gourd genetic improvement and genetic analysis targeting agronomic and horticultural attributes, nutritional composition, biotic, and abiotic stress tolerance to guide current and future cultivar development, germplasm access, and conservation in SSA. The first section of the paper presents progress on breeding of bottle gourd for horticultural traits, agronomic performance, nutritional and anti-nutritional composition, and biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. This is followed by important highlights on key genetic resources of cultivated and wild bottle gourd for demand driven breeding. Lastly, the review summaries advances in bottle gourd genomics, genetic engineering and genome editing. Information presented in this paper should aid bottle gourd breeders and agronomists to develop and deploy new generation and promising varieties with farmer- and market -preferred attributes.
Highlights
Bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.] is widely cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for multiple uses (Morimoto et al, 2005; Abdin et al, 2014; Gürcan et al, 2015; Mashilo et al, 2015)
Bottle gourd is moderately resistant to a number of viral and fungal caused diseases such as papaya ringspot, Fusarium wilt, powdery mildew, cercospora leaf spot and tobacco mosaic virus (Yetisir and Sari, 2003; Yetisir et al, 2007; Kousik et al, 2008), cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), papaya ringspot virus (PRSV-P), watermelon mosaic virus 2 (WMV-2), and yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) (Provvidenti, 1981, 1995; Provvidenti and Gonsalves, 1984; Ling and Levi, 2007)
We propose comparative analysis of cucurbitacins profiling between cultivated and wild bottle gourd species to determine the worth of wild species as sources of phytochemical compounds
Summary
Bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.] is widely cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for multiple uses (Morimoto et al, 2005; Abdin et al, 2014; Gürcan et al, 2015; Mashilo et al, 2015) It is grown for its young and succulent leaves and young fruit which are consumed as cooked vegetable (Morimoto and Mvere, 2004; Hart, 2011; Mashilo et al, 2017a,b,c). Commercial varieties are yet to be developed and deployed in the region due to a lack of dedicated genetic improvement programs of the crop As such bottle gourd is categorized as an underutilized crop in SSA where its production is mostly practiced by small-scale farmers under low input farming systems. The generation of bottle gourd cultivars should encompass product profiles including quality and leave quantity, fruit, fodder, seed, nutritional compositions to serve varied value chains, and the food and feed industry. The aim of this paper is to provide progress on bottle gourd genetic improvement and genetic analysis targeting agronomic and horticultural attributes, nutritional composition, biotic and abiotic stress tolerance to guide current and future cultivar development, germplasm access, and conservation in SSA and globally
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