Abstract
Fruit firmness and crispness are important traits of cucumber because they directly affect its commercial value. We performed quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of these fruit texture traits with the double-digest restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD-Seq) technique and detected 31 QTLs for fruit firmness: 11 for placenta firmness, 12 for skin firmness, and 8 for flesh firmness; and 25 QTLs for crispness-related scores: 10 for flesh crispness index, 8 for flesh apparent fractal dimension by Richardson plot, and 7 for flesh apparent fractal dimension by box-counting (Kolmogorov’s dimension). Several QTLs associated with flesh firmness and crispness are located near regions for fruit length, diameter, and length-to-diameter ratio, and for resistance to powdery mildew and downy mildew, indicating that gene linkage is likely to limit breeding efficiency. Our results will contribute to the development of informative DNA markers closely linked to genes for desirable fruit texture traits that are required for effective selection of new cultivars.
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Data availability
Data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Motoki Shimizu of Iwate Biotechnology Research Center for coaching in NGS data analysis, and Dr. Kenta Shirasawa of Kazusa DNA Research Institute for instruction in ddRAD-Seq analysis. We also thank F. Hori, S. Masuji, D. Yamashita, Y. Wazaki, M. Shindo, M. Wakabayashi, Y. Taki, A. Suzuki, C. Yamada, A. Tsunoda, and M. Sano of the Institute of Vegetable and Floriculture Science, NARO, for technical assistance.
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This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A), JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP26712004.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by YY and KS. All authors discussed and guided all steps of the experiments, and contributed to the preparation of the final version of the paper.
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Shimomura, K., Sugiyama, M., Kawazu, Y. et al. Quantitative trait locus analysis of cucumber fruit texture using double‐digest restriction‐site‐associated DNA sequencing. Euphytica 217, 107 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-021-02830-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-021-02830-y