Pumpkin is a vegetable that has a great importance on family farm in northeastern Brazil. Many communities have found difficulties in the commercialization of all the produced fruits, due to the large phenotypic variability, which does not always attend the market requirements. The study of genetic parameters is important to provide information on the deployment and conduction of breeding programs. Thus, the aim of this study was to estimate genetic, phenotypic and environmental parameters for morphological and agronomic characters in pumpkin. Seven pumpkin genotypes were studied in the crop years 2008 and 2009, considering as random the effect of years and as fixed the effect of populations. The analyzed variables were fruit length and width, pulp thickness in the peduncle, the middle and the lower region of the fruit, height and width of the fruit internal cavity, fruit yield, number of seeds per fruit and fresh weight of 100 seeds. Pulp thickness in the peduncle presented the highest coefficients of genetic variation, 25.10 and 41.32 in the two evaluated agricultural years, respectively. Heritability was above 90% for the variables fruit length (98 and 97%), fruit width (98 and 95%), pulp thickness in the peduncle and in the middle region of the fruit (98 and 96%), and height of the fruit internal cavity (99 and 97%), in the two evaluated agricultural years. For the CVg/CVe ratio, the values were greater than 1.0 for the characters fruit length and width, pulp thickness in the peduncle and in the middle region of the fruit, width and height of the fruit internal cavity, fruit yield, number of seeds per fruit, and fresh weight of 100 seeds. In the joint analysis of means, the genotypes showed different behavior in relation to the evaluated characters.
Cucurbita moschata; breeding; variability; variance; herdability
