Morphologic and moleculer characterization in seed pumpkins

Morphological and molecular characterization of a pumpkin collection was studied. Plant materiel was consisted twenty four genotipes belonging to three species: Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita moschata and Cucurbita maxima. A big part of Cucurbita pepo genotypes are seed pumpkin and some of them are naked seed types used for appetizer and/or for oil production. Six winter pumpkin genotypes from C. moschata and C. maxima and three genotypes of unknown species have also been included in the experiments. Molecular analyses realised by ISSR and the SRAP techniques. Morphological characterization was done according to UPOV criteria. In the ISSR study 60 bands were obtained by using 8 ISSR primers and all these bands were found polimorphic. In the SRAP study, 8 primer combinations were used, a total of 71 bands were scored and all these bands were polimorphic. In the ISSR analyses, the genetic similarity coefficients varied between 0.07 and 0.96, while in SRAP it was between 0.13 ? 1.0. The correlation coefficient between ISSR and SRAP genetic similarity data was very high: ( r = 0.947). Some differences were observed between molecular and morphological studies, and it was concluded that morphological analyses are insufficient by themselves and molecular techniques are more reliable in genetic variability studies.