A Review on the Medicinally Important Plants of the Family Cucurbitaceae

Cucurbits (Cucurbitaceae) are among the most important plant families supplying humans with edible products and useful fibers. Plants of this family are very similar in above ground development, but they have high genetic diversity for fruit shape and other fruit characteristics, resulting in a variety of uses. The objective of this review was to discuss the origin and evolution of the most important cultivated cucurbits. Understanding the evolutionary history and domestication process increase the possibility for better exploiting the genetic diversity for cultivar development. The domestication selection in cucurbits was for shape, less bitter flesh, larger and fewer seeds, and larger fruit size, resulting in high genetic diversity within and among cultivated species. This variation can be associated with the wide range of uses that require different shape, size and a constant ratio between fruit length and fruit diameter. The discussion of the breeding history indicates how artificial selection could speed up changes in fruit characteristics to attend specific uses and increase adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions in which cucurbits are growing worldwide. Although interspecific hybridization has been employed in cucurbit breeding more than in any other family, there is still a high potential for increasing its application for germplasm and cultivar development.

Inflammations and immune-related diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis are growing global concerns. Most of the drugs from plants which have become important in modern medicine had a folklore origin and are traditional in systems of medicine. Citrullus colocynthis Schrad. (cucurbitaceae), endemic in Southern Tunisia, is used in folk medicine to treat many inflammation diseases. To evaluate the acute toxicity of different parts of Citrullus colocynthis and then to screen the analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities of aqueous extracts from roots and stems of the plant and from fruits and seeds at different maturation stages. After identification and acute toxicity assay Citrullus colocynthis Schrad. aqueous extracts were screened for analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities using, respectively, the acetic acid writhing test in mice and the carrageenan-induced paw edema assay in rats. All extracts displayed analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities at different doses without inducing acute toxicity. Topic results were obtained with immature fruits followed by seeds. The stem and root extracts were shown to possess the less significant inhibitory activity against analgesic and anti-inflammatory models. Based on this study, we confirmed that Citrullus colocynthis Schrad. is a potentially useful drug suitable for further evaluation for rheumatoid arthritis, and its folk medicinal use as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory agents is validated. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.