Inheritance of seed weight in Cucumis sativus (L.) var. sativus and var. hardwickii (Royle) Kitamura

Summary A series of experiments was conducted to determine the inheritance of seed weight in cucumber. Matings between a Cucumis sativus var. sativus (Cs) L. inbred line (USDA WI 1606; P₁) and a C. sativus var. hardwickii (Royle) Kitamura (Ch) collection (PI 215589; P₂) were made to produce seed of reciprocal F₁, F₂, and BC₁ families. Families were grown under field and greenhouse conditions, and seeds were extracted from fruit 55 to 60 days post-pollination. Seed of F₁ and F₂ families was obtained using the Cs inbred WI2808 (P₁₂) and the Ch collection LJ 90430 (P₁₀), and seed of F₁ families were produced using a North Carolina Design II mating scheme in which three Cs (P₃= GY-14; P₄=WI 1379; P₅=WI 1909) inbreds were used as maternal parents and seven Ch collections (P₂; P₆= PI462369; P₇=486336; P₈=LJ91176; P₉=273469; P₁₀= 2590430; P₁₁=PI187367) were used as paternal parents. Mean seed weights of F₁ progeny reflected the dominance of genes of the C. sativus var. sativus parent. Transformation to number of seeds per unit weight resulted in increased variance homogeneity within generations and a broad-sense heritability ranging between 26% to 56%. Additive and dominance effects were important in the expression of seed weight in P₁×P₂ progeny produced in the greenhouse and additive effects were important in field grown progeny resulting from P₁×P₂ and P₁₀×P₁₂ matings. The estimated number of factors or loci involved ranged between 10 to 13, depending on the method of calculation.