ARS | Publication request: MARKER-AIDED AND PHENOTYPIC SELECTION FOR MULTIPLE LATERAL BRANCHING IN CUCUMBER

Submitted to: HortScience
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: May 20, 2002
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: Yield increase in processing cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is positively correlated with increased number of fruit bearing branches per plant. Multiple lateral branching (MLB) is controlled by at least five factors. The objective of this investigation was to determine if marker-assisted selection (MAS) could be effective as an indirect selection tool for MLB in processing cucumber, and to identify the map position of other yield and quality components. Using previously identified SSR, STS and RAPD markers (5), MAS was practiced on a BC1 population to produce BC2 families and on a BC2 population to produce BC3 families. The BC2 and BC3 families resulting fromMS (BC2MAS, BC3MAS) were compared to BC2 and BC3 families developed through phenotypic selection (BC2PHE, BC3PHE) and to control BC2 and BC3 families (BC2RND, BC3RND) selected randomly from the same source populations. Although no significant differences between phenotypic and marker aided selection were detected, both treatments were higher than the random control. These data indicate that MAS can be useful for MLB selection in cucumber. The mean MLB for P1(G421), P2(H19), F1, BC2PHE, BC3PHE, BC2MAS, BC3MAS, BC2RND, and BC3RND were 7.4, 1.5, 4.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.1, 3.1, 2.2, and 2.4, respectively. The map position of yield and quality components such as fruits/plant, fruit length diameter ratio, days to anthesis and sex-expression were mapped using a set of 170 recombinant inbred lines.