Phenotypic and Genetic Diversity in Pumpkin Accessions with Mutated Seed Coats

The increasing importance of pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.) cultivars for seed production has led to considerable breeding efforts for novel high-yielding and disease-resistant cultivars lacking seedcoats. Because it is very important to use genetically diverse genotypes for the development of cultivars with a broad genetic and phenotypic base, this study focused on phenotypic and genetic diversity within and among available pumpkin accessions with mutated seedcoat phenotypes. Fifty-one accessions were collected from various sources and countries, which showed a wide variety of seedcoat types. Genetic analysis with 18 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers revealed that 37.59% of the total genetic diversity was attributable to interpopulation differentiation and 62.41% to individual differentiation within populations. The average genetic differentiation between accessions (F-ST) was from 0.030 to 0.760, whereas expected heterozygosity (He) was between 0.048 and 0.491 and observed heterozygosity (H-o between 0.056 and 0.522. Based on unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) analysis, the genetic relationship among accessions reflects the primary geographical origin of accessions. Marker amplification yielded a total of 109 alleles with an average number of alleles per locus of 6.06. Gene diversity per locus varied between 0.027 and 0.879, whereas the polymorphism information content (PIC) varied between 0.027 and 0.867. This is the first report about intra-accession phenotypic and genotypic variability of pumpkins with mutated seedcoats cultivated for their seeds, which are today used in the baking industry, seed oil production, and in traditional and modern medicine.