1Key Laboratory of Vegetable Postharvest Processing, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing Key Laboratory of Fruits and Vegetable Storage and Processing, Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (North China) of Ministry of Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Urban Agriculture (North) of Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing Vegetable Research Center, Institute of Agro-Products Processing and Food Nutrition, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China 2Department of Food Biotechnology, College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China 3Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Biodiversity Sciences and Ecological Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Institute of Biodiversity Sciences and Institute of Plant Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, 2005 Songhu Road, Shanghai 200438, China 4School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE12 5RD, United Kingdom *Corresponding author. E-mail: donald.grierson@nottingham.ac.uk,zuojinhua@126.com,xuyong@nercv.org †Lili Ma and Qing Wang,Yanyan Zheng contributed equally to the study.
Received: 24 Aug 2021 Accepted: 28 Oct 2021 Published online: 19 Jan 2022
Abstract
Cucurbitaceae is one of the most genetically diverse plant families in the world. Many of them are important vegetables or medicinal plants and are widely distributed worldwide. The rapid development of sequencing technologies and bioinformatic algorithms has enabled the generation of genome sequences of numerous important Cucurbitaceae species. This has greatly facilitated research on gene identification, genome evolution, genetic variation, and molecular breeding of cucurbit crops. So far, genome sequences of 18 different cucurbit species belonging to tribes Benincaseae, Cucurbiteae, Sicyoeae, Momordiceae, and Siraitieae have been deciphered. This review summarizes the genome sequence information, evolutionary relationships, and functional genes associated with important agronomic traits (e.g. fruit quality). The progress of molecular breeding in cucurbit crops and prospects for future applications of Cucurbitaceae genome information are also discussed.
, Donald Grierson4 and Jinhua Zuo1 ,
