The world’s food and agricultural programs have gradually declined into an unsustainable situation due to challenges such as increase in world population, varied agro-climatic regions, increase temperature, extreme sole-culture growing techniques, and water shortage. A considerable emphasis has been put on few staple food crops coupled with repeated dieting, food scarcity, and essential mineral deficits, frequently inducing dietary disorders. Because relying on staple crops may lead to serious food shortages in the future, we must adjust our dietary habits to include a diverse range of non-staple foods and maximize their use in order to achieve food security and reduce the nutritional gap. To assure healthy meals around the world, an authentic and reasonable strategy is presented to draw additional awareness towards variations in agricultural production techniques and dietary preferences. The EAT-Lancet declaration highlighted the importance of increasing agri-based foods to achieve sustainable health. Expanding overlooked crops with abundant genetic stocks and possibly beneficial characteristics is an approach that might meet food and nutritional security challenges. Although undervalued, pumpkin is a valuable vegetable herbaceous plant that contributes to global food and nutritional security. This crop has already been identified as a revolutionary age crop, balanced food, and more adapted to low soil and atmospheric circumstances than other major crops. This review paper focuses on the potential uses of pumpkin as an underutilized crop; diversification and development of hybrids, particularly hybridization breeding through diallel mating design; and how implementation of this “modern” technology would contribute to the breeding of the neglected pumpkin vegetable and stimulate productivity and nourish the world’s largest malnourished, deprived, and starved populations.

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It is crucial to assess genetically superior parents when developing novel hybrids. This experiment was conducted to find out the diversity of 27 Capsicum annuum mutant lines derived from two varieties.To achieve the objective, 23 morpho-physiological and yield traits were recorded through two planting seasons. Highly significant differences (p0.01) were recorded among the studied traits. There was a strong to moderately positive phenotypic association between yield and all other morphological traits except first bifurcation length, stem diameter, pedicle length, flowering date, and maturity date. A higher Genotypic Coefficient of Variation (GCV) and Phenotypic Coefficient of Variation (PCV), combined with moderate to high heritability and high hereditary progress, have been found in the number of fruits per plant, fruit yield per plant, and number of seeds per fruit. High heritability was found in yield characteristics, vis-à-visnumber of seeds per fruit, number of fruits per plant, and indicated high genetic advance. The studied genotypes were divided into six groups after the cluster analysis. Based on the correlation matrix of 23 quantitative characteristics, principal component analysis revealed that the percentage of variation for PC1 and PC2 is 28%and 19%, respectively, andPC1 represents the largest percentage of the overall total variation. The calculated genetic distance also explains the potential of heterosis breeding. The revealed findings might be helpful for breeders to target quantitative characters and the parental lines ofC. annuumduring the execution of their future breeding programmes for developing high-yielding and climate-resilient chilli varieties.

A full diallel mating design was used to hybridize seven pumpkin inbred parental lines, yielding 42 F1 hybrids, including reciprocals. The generated F1 hybrids, parental lines and commercial check hybrid were evaluated in two environments to investigate the per se performances, combining ability effects and magnitude of heterosis over mid-parent, better-parent and commercial check hybrids for yield and attributed sweetness, total carotenoid and antioxidant traits, using a randomized complete block design with three replications. The analysis of variance for most of the examined traits revealed highly significant differences (p ≤ 0.01) for GCA, SCA, reciprocal, maternal and non-maternal variances and their interaction with the environment. Since the inheritance of yield and its contributing fruit quality, and antioxidant traits is governed by non-additive gene action, it suggests heterosis breeding would be useful in obtaining further improvements in pumpkin. From the experiment, it was found that the paternal lines P1 (Gold Butter 315) for dry matter content and DPPH (%), P4 for total carotenoid content, P6 for fruit number per plant and P7 (Australia-1) for single fruit weight, fruit flesh thickness, yield per plant and total soluble solid were shown to be good general combiners. In respect to per se performance, combining ability effects and magnitude of heterosis over mid-parent, better-parent and commercial check, the cross P2 (928 Fuxiang) × P1 (Gold Butter 315) and P4 (Asian pumpkin) × P5 (Sarawak) for single fruit weight and yield per plant, the cross P5 (Sarawak) × P2 (928 Fuxiang) for fruits number per plant, P1 (Gold Butter 315) × P7 (Australia-1) and P1 (Gold Butter 315) × P6 (Sarawak) for total soluble solid and dry matter content, P7 (Australia-1) × P2 (928 Fuxiang) for total carotenoid content and P3 (Ser Bajadi) × P1 (Gold Butter 315) for DPPH (antioxidant) were identified to be highly significant positive specific combiners and the highest performers, and these crosses may be exploited as commercial hybrids.

A better understanding of the various desirable characteristics present in chili (Capsicum annuum L.) genotypes has aided in developing more effective selection methods for crop improvement. Identifying genetically superior parents is critical in selecting the best parents and inbred lines for breeding purposes. This study was conducted over two planting seasons in glasshouse using morpho-physiological parameters to evaluate the heritability variation of selected chili genotypes based on their genetic diversity for future breeding program. Significant variances were observed in all the studied parameters across the chili pepper accessions with an inclusive range of diversity. The highest genotypic coefficient of variation (≥ 20%) was observed for all physiological and yield characteristics. While the highest phenotypic coefficient of variation (≥ 20%) was seen for all examined characteristics. All studied parameter had high broad sense heritability (˃ 55%) except total number of branches per plant (47.9%) while the moderate to high genetic advance were observer for all studied traits demonstrating that the extents of heritability and variability are due to their genetic makeup and environment had little influence on these characters. The evaluated genotypes were grouped into seven clusters based on the cluster analysis and Group I recorded highest yield with eight genotypes while Groups III, IV, V, VI, and VII recorded one each. Plant height and total branch number showed a highly significant positive correlation with the number of fruits per plant and yield per plant. Similarly, the number of fruits per plant had a highly significant positive correlation with fruit yield per plant. The study revealed that genetic variability might be usefully exploited through selection for further breeding purposes to increase yield and production.