Advance in sex differentiation in cucumber

Haiyan Luo; Huanchun Zhang; Huasen Wang

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1186904

Advance in sex differentiation in cucumber

Front Plant Sci. 2023 May 17:14:1186904. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1186904. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Haiyan Luo^{1

2

3}, Huanchun Zhang⁴, Huasen Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Quality and Safety Control of Subtropical Fruits and Vegetables, Collaborative Innovation Center for Efficient and Green Production of Agriculture in Mountainous Areas of Zhejiang Province, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Horticulture Science, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China.
² Engineering Laboratory of Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops of Shandong Province, College of Horticulture, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China.
³ Hangzhou Lin'an District Agricultural and Rural Bureau, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ Yantai Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Yantai, China.

Abstract

Cucumber belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae (melon genus) and is an annual herbaceous vegetable crop. Cucumber is an important cash crop that is grown all over the world. From morphology to cytology, from canonical genetics to molecular biology, researchers have performed much research on sex differentiation and its regulatory mechanism in cucumber, mainly in terms of cucumber sex determination genes, environmental conditions, and the effects of plant hormones, revealing its genetic basis to improve the number of female flowers in cucumber, thus greatly improving the yield of cucumber. This paper reviews the research progress of sex differentiation in cucumber in recent years, mainly focusing on sex-determining genes, environmental conditions, and the influence of phytohormones in cucumber, and provides a theoretical basis and technical support for the realization of high and stable yield cultivation and molecular breeding of cucumber crop traits.

Keywords: cucumber; environmental conditions; phytohormones; regulatory mechanism; sex differentiation genes.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Science & Technology Specific Projects in Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Area of the Yellow River Delta (Grant No: 2022SZX36), the Major Science and Technology Project of Plant Breeding in Zhejiang Province (Grant No: 2021C02065-2), the “Pioneer” and “Leading Goose” R&D Program of Zhejiang (Grant No: 2022C02051), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 31972221, 32002048, and 32172595), the Ministry of Agriculture, and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFD1000300).