The most recent critical checklists of the Cucurbitaceae of India are 30 years old. Since then, botanical exploration, online availability of specimen images and taxonomic literature, and molecular-phylogenetic studies have led to modified taxon boundaries and geographic ranges. We present a checklist of the Cucurbitaceae of India that treats 400 relevant names and provides information on the c...

The use of intergenic spacer (IGS) fragments of plant ribosomal DNA (rDNA) for the differentiation between genera and species is tested by cross-hybridization experiments with different IGS probes of two Cucurbitaceae, Cucurbita pepo (zucchini) and Cucumis sativus (cucumber). Hybridization with cloned fragments of different parts of the IGS of ribosomal DNA exhibit a different degree of conserv...

Introduction: Although Ecballium elaterium (L.) A. Rich., is considered as a minor crop in the Cucurbitaceae family. However, its medicinal virtues (3, 8) and its resistance to pests and diseases (6, 7), have made the plant a suitable candidate to improve crop quality in Cucurbitaceae species. Cultivation studies were aimed at assessing the growth of the plant and the variation of cucurbitacins...

Cucurbitaceae plants are of considerable biological and economic importance, and genomes of cucumber, watermelon, and melon have been sequenced. However, a comparative genomics exploration of their genome structures and evolution has not been available. Here, we aimed at performing a hierarchical inference of genomic homology resulted from recursive paleopolyploidizations. Unexpectedly, we foun...

The Cucurbitaceae genus Bryonia contains ten species that are distributed throughout the Mediterranean to North Africa and from central Europe to Kazakhstan. References to the medicinal uses of species of Bryonia span two millennia, including two passages in Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica, written in about 65 CE. An illustrated copy of this text, known as the Codex Vindobonensis and dated 512 ...

This monograph deals with all 95 names described in the Cucurbitaceae genus Coccinia and recognizes 25 species. Taxonomic novelties are Cocciniaadoensisvar.aurantiaca (C.Jeffrey) Holstein, stat. nov., Cocciniasessilifoliavar.variifolia (A.Meeuse) Holstein, stat. nov., and Cocciniaadoensisvar.jeffreyana Holstein, var. nov. For the 25 species 3157 collections were examined, of which 2024 were geo...

Plants of dietary nature contain rich sources of nutrients and secondary metabolites of therapeutic importance. Cucurbits belong to Cucurbitaceae family and are rich sources of nutritional and medicinal compounds [1-4]. Cucurbitaceae consists of nearly 100 genera and over 750 species [5-8]. Dietary intervention of these groups of plants can ameliorate various types of diseases through their pre...