Breeding Parthenocarpic Cucumber: Inheritance and Molecular Marker-Based Genetic Mapping

Cucumber breeders have employed several methodologies to improve its yield. These include the improvement of disease resistance, use of gynoecious sex types, manipulation of plant architecture, and increasing genetic variability. Despite of these breeding efforts, the average yield in processing cucumber in the United States has plateaued in last twenty years. New research areas need to be explored for yield improvement. Parthenocarpy has potential for increasing and stabilizing yield under inclement condition. However, there is no knowledge is available for parthenocarpy in gynoecious, U.S. processing type cucumber. Therefore, a series of studies were designed to determine the inheritance and location of parthenocarpy in this market type by generation mean analysis, variance component analysis, bulk segregant analysis, and QTL mapping. This study should help shed some light on understanding and utilizing this new trait, and should be especially useful to cucumber breeders and other scientists who work on crop improvement through traditional and molecular assistant breeding.