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ETHYLMETHANESULFONATE MUTAGENESIS OF CUCUMBER FOR

LARGE-SCALE MUTANT SCREENS

CUNBAO XUE1,2, CHAO WANG1,2, LIANXUE FAN1,2, NING HAO1,2, DANDAN ZOU1,2,

QIAN ZHANG1,2, HUANXUAN CHEN1,2 AND TAO WU1,2,*

1 Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (Northeast Region), Ministry of Agriculture, Northeast Agricultural University, 59 Mucai Street, Harbin 150030, China

2Horticultural College, Northeast Agricultural University, 59 Mucai Street, Harbin 150030, China

*Corresponding author’s email: wutao@neau.edu.cn; Tel +86-451-5519-0214; Fax +86-451-5519-0214

Abstract

To broaden the genetic resources for cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) breeding, and to accelerate the systematic functional analysis of cucumber genes, a cucumber mutant library was constructed by using Ethylmethanesulfonate (EMS) mutation in this study. A total of 2,200 seeds were treated with EMS solutions, and 421 M2 families were obtained, which showed a mutant frequency of 19.1%. Some visible mutant phenotypes, such as having few spines, long fruits, short fruits, pale green fruit color, and plants without flowers were identified in this study. This study will be helpful for the identification of causal genes and for the determination of interesting mutant phenotypes of cucumber in the future.

Key words: Breeding, Fruit, Mutant, Spine, Tilling.