Chinese scientists reveal the Mystery of Sex determination of Cucumber

A few days ago, the reporter learned from the vegetable and Flower Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences that the vegetable functional genomics innovation team of the institute, in cooperation with their counterparts at home and abroad, found that a change in the copy number of a large fragment of DNA sequence could determine the sex of cucumber. The related results have been published in the famous international journal Plant Cell recently.

According to reports, cucumber is a typical dioecious crop. Most cucumber varieties have both female and male flowers, and only female flowers can develop into fruits. In Europe, some varieties are all female lines, and the whole plant has female flowers, so it has high potential to increase yield. The sex determination mechanism of cucumber all female lines has been the focus of research at home and abroad, a number of research teams have done a lot of exploration around this issue, but have not got a very clear answer.

The vegetable functional genomics innovation team of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences conducted the research on the basis of constructing the whole genome variation map of cucumber in 2013. It was found that the whole female line of cucumber was caused by an increase in the copy number of a 30kb-sized DNA fragment, and it was found that the increase in copy number should initially occur in a cucumber material in East Asia, and then spread to Europe to form a cucumber variety with higher yield. The revelation of the genetic mechanism of cucumber all-female lines has important guiding significance for further revealing the sex determination mechanism, and has potential important application value for the cultivation of high-yield cucumber varieties in the future.

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