All of this is relly interesting and you all inspired me to try grow Lagenaria next year and see if it will grow well on my small island. Maybe this could be a cucurbit that I’ll have some success since I struggle with pepos…
Anyway, I was reading some stuff on cucurbits on the forum and in this post there’s a link to an interesting blog post on bitter compounds aka cucurbitacin in various cucurbits, with some references linked at the end.
What cought my eye, and could be of interest for landracing Lagenaria in drought conditions is a linked article titled Photosynthetic response of bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.] to drought stress: Relationship between cucurbitacins accumulation and drought tolerance.