ABSTRACT
Cucumber is the fourth most important vegetable crop cultivated worldwide. Smaller genome size and short crop duration has facilitated enormous advancement in characterizing the genetic resources and generate trait specific genomic information. Cucumber is highly cross-pollinated in nature and is a model plant species to study the typical nature of sex-expression. As it is viny in nature, development of genotypes with shorter inter-node is very important to maximize yield potential. Several dwarf mutants with a shorter internode were developed and characterized. Downy mildew, powdery mildew and occurrence of several viral diseases results in significant yield loss in cucumber. A large number of genotypes with resistance to important biotic stresses were identified and underlying molecular mechanism for resistance was studied. Genomic regions associated with resistance to important biotic stresses, candidate genes associated with resistance and loss of susceptibility factors have been reported in cucumber. The molecular marker identified through GWAS, TILLING, and Eco-TILLING are also documented. Recently, understanding the physiological and molecular basis of abiotic stress tolerance have also been reported by several research groups. This chapter summarizes the up-to-date development in allele mining for important traits in cucumber.
