There does not appear to be any refereed journal paper about any aspect of pumpkin growth, processing, marketing or use in Sierra Leone. The publicly available bibliographic database PubMed includes over 2,000 references to pumpkin. However, most are of limited or no relevance to the HKI-the Strengthening Partnerships, Results, and Innovations in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) objectives.

Thirty-nine journal papers were reviewed and have been broadly categorised into the following categories:

• Agriculture and botany
• Storing and processing the fruit
• Nutritional properties of pumpkin (generally and for weaning)
• Medicinal properties of pumpkin (treatment of cancer, diabetes, tapeworm and depression)
• Anti-medicinal properties of pumpkin (allergies and dermatitis)