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The Cucurbita genus, often called as cucurbits, include several economically important fruits and vegetable crops like cucumber, gourds, squash, watermelon, pumpkin, and melon. Several of the species including Cucurbita pepo and C. maxima have nutritional value and are utilized in folk medicine for treating gastrointestinal diseases and intestinal parasites. Such an activity is attributed to the presence of fatty acids, glycosides, resins, sterols, carotenoids, phenols, tocopherols, saponins, steroids, and terpenoids such as cucurbitacins. Squash and pumpkin are the major members of Cucurbitaceae family used as food and animal feed. The two major pumpkin varieties C. pepo and C. maxima are considered as highly polymorphic with manifold nutritional, including food preservative abilities and medicinal activities. Development of transgenic pepo for tolerance to various biotic and abiotic stresses coupled with nutritional value is the need of the hour. Very few reports are available on transgenic production of pepo. The present review summarizes the regeneration and transformation protocols for developing transgenic C. pepo and C. maxima and future prospects.

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is the second most important vegetable crop of the world. It is rich in nutrition with zero cholesterol, but highly sensitive to abiotic stresses, especially salt, drought, and high temperatures. Development of transgenic tomatoes that are climate resilient coupled with high nutritional value and improved shelf-life of fruit is the need of the hour. Utilization of conventional plant breeding methods and genetic engineering technologies must therefore be vital to achieve these goals. Tomatoes overexpressing transgenes and transcription factors conferred tolerance against different abiotic stresses with increased fruit production in comparison with wild-type (WT) plants. Similarly, delayed fruit ripening and nutritional quality of the fruit have been achieved in tomato. The present review describes the current status of the development of transgenic tomatoes that are tolerant to diverse abiotic stresses alongside delayed fruit ripening and other quality attributes and projects the potential areas for future research.

Many of the drugs that are sold in the market today are mostly the synthetic modifications of the naturally available plant products. Many have been resorting to natural sources of remedies since they have less side effects. Since a large number of secondary plant products have commercial importance, there is a renewed interest in the possibility of altering the production of bioactive compounds using in vitro techniques. Plants produce low amounts of secondary plant products or bioactive compounds, and hence in vitro grown callus, suspensions, and morphogenic cultures are being exploited for enhanced production. Detection and increased production of secondary metabolites have been reported in diverse medicinal plants. The present review is aimed to cover recent advances for the production of some important plant pharmaceuticals from selected plant species.