ISHS Acta Horticulturae 510: VII Eucarpia Meeting on Cucurbit Genetics and Breeding
BREEDING FOR HIGH FRUIT YIELD IN CUCUMBER |
| Authors: | N. V. Shetty, Todd C. Wehner |
| Keywords: | Cucumis sativus, vegetable breeding |
| Abstract:
Fruit yield is an important trait in cucumber. Plant breeders are interested in developing new cultivars with concentrated fruit set for the benefit of growers using expensive hand labor or machine harvest systems. The effects of ethrel on yield and fruit quality were studied on pickling cucumbers differing in sex expression. The effects of harvesting cucumbers at two different fruit stages on yield and quality traits were also studied. No differences were observed between the two harvest dates (fruit stages) for ethrel treatments. One spray of ethrel was sufficient to affect a diverse array of monoecious pickling cucumbers for total, marketable, percentage of cull fruits and fruit quality ratings, but only the fruit quality was affected in gynoecious cucumbers. The effect of ethrel was also observed on near-isogenic lines differing in sex expression. Ethrel sprays converted monoecious cucumbers to the degree of femaleness possessed by gynoecious accessions. Yield (total and early fruit number) increased with increasing numbers of ethrel applications. Accessions with the highest yields were PI 215589, PI 344440, PI 356809, PI 370643, and PI 534543. A total of 79 plant introduction accessions were found to yield higher than the highest yielding cultivars tested (‘Poinsett 76’ and ‘Calypso’). | |
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