This study was carried out during three successive summer seasons of 2013 till 2015 to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of one cycle of simple recurrent selection and selfing with selection for two generations to improve some important characters of pumpkin cultivar 'Balady'. Eight derived genetic populations; i. e, original population (C0), one cycle of simple recurrent selection (C1) and six selected progenies from selfing with selection were evaluated for vegetative, flowering, yield components and fruit quality characters. The results of the estimated values of coefficient of variation indicated that the original population (C0) had an extensive range of variability which ranged from 13.55% for number of days to first female flower up to 71.83% for total yield/plant. The first cycle of recurrent selection enhanced the main stem length, number of branches/plant, average fruit weight and number of fruits/plant with about 122.60%, 157.50%, 338.30 % and 243.33% respectively. Also, selfing with selection method for two generations enhanced main stem length, and number of branches per plant, average fruit weight and in number of fruits/plant for all selected selfed progenies over that of the original population. The selected selfed progeny S2-1 and C1 gave high improvement values of total yield/plant with about 189.91% and 148.69%, respectively. The first cycle of recurrent selection was found to be apparently efficient in increasing and enhancement the general performances more than selfing with selection for two generations for all studied characters, except for number of days to first female flower and carotene content.