Multipurpose Pumpkin Improvement: A Guide for Characterisation, Evaluation, Production and Value Addition
Synopsis
This book is expressly penned for all readers who are passionate about plant landraces that remain neglected in communties, owing to lack of awareness about their immense food and nutritional potential. The first author having observed pumpkin undergo this treatment from a very young age up to when she had developed her career to become a university professor of horticulture decided to do something about this fruit-vegetable so as to raise it from a neglected and under-utilized species to a commercializable crop. She was awed by the way the local pumpkin could be found growing all over homesteads and roadsides but as a volunteer crop, and yet once nicely grown with luscious leaves and fruits the households near it could not hesitate to pluck its leaves and fruits, cook and help themselves to them sumptuously. It left her wondering why pumpkin could not be developed into a commercial crop. She then conceptualised the studies that generated information captured in this book for utilization by all interested parties to develop this crop into a gold mine. The information is adaptable for large-scale cultivation, production, commercialisation, seed-bulking, fruit processing into flour or snacks, widespread household utilization, as well as further improvement, breeding, germplasm conservation and development of new cultivars for this under-utilized, yet highly nutrient-rich and promising fruit-vegetable. The book is ideal as a textbook for university students, lecturers, horticulturists, plant breeders, biodiversity conservators, biotechnologists, food scientists, as well as leisure readership.
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