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

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.