Cucumber
Breeding at NC State
North Carolina State University has had a breeding program
on cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) for more than half
a century. The program was established by Warren Barham
in 1948. Richard Lower was hired in 1968 to work on pickling
cucumbers. Cucumber breeding was carried out part-time prior
to 1968 by Frank Haynes and Johnny Jenkins. In 1979, Todd
Wehner was hired to breed pickling and slicing cucumbers.
The main objectives of the program are to expand our knowledge
of cucumber genetics and breeding, educate graduate students
interested in vegetable breeding, do research on problems
affecting the cucumber industry, and develop improved cultivars
and breeding lines of pickling and slicing types for use
in North Carolina and the U.S.
One major research area has been to incorporate nematode
resistance from LJ 90430 (a wild accession of Cucumis sativus
var. hardwickii collected from the foothills of the Himalayas
in India) into an elite, adapted inbred line. A set of cultivars
(Lucia, Manteo, and Shelby) released recently from the program
shows the progress made. The wild accession has bitter fruit,
dormant seeds, large seedcell, low yield, late maturity,
small leaves, multiple branching habit, and mostly male
flowers. From that, we produced resistant cultivars with
high yield, early maturity, fast germinating seeds, high
quality fruit with small seedcell, large leaf size, and
monoecious flowering habit.
