Relationship between somaclonal variation and type of culture in cucumber

Abstract

Highly inbred B line of cucumber was used to compare the effect of four types of in vitro culture on somaclonal variation. The plants were regenerated from the following types of culture: twelve- and eighteen-month-old liquid culture of meristematic clumps (LMC12(18)), ten-month-old embryogenic cytokinin-dependent suspension (CDS), eighteen-month-old embryogenic cytokinin-dependent suspension in medium with modified NH+ 4/NO3 - ratio (CDS 1.7), twelve-month-old embryogenic auxin-dependent suspension (ADS), thirty six-month-old embryogenic auxin-dependent suspension in medium with modified NH+ 4/NO3 - ratio (ADS 1.7) and recurrent leaf callus regeneration (RLC) – repeated 5 times. The differences in the incidence of the following properties were observed: the ploidy of R0 plants, the segregation of new morphological traits in R1 and the germination ability of R1 seeds. R1 families with the segregation of new phenotypes were most numerous in CDS (62.5%) and LMC18 (57.9%), next in CDS1.7 (35.7%), while the smallest number was found in LMC12 (11.1%) and RLC (3.4%).Tetraploid and mixoploid plants occurred in ADS1.7 and ADS (100%) whereas CDS and RLC were observed to contain only tetraploids, respectively 33.3% and 55.2%. There were no changes of ploidy after LMC12, LMC18 and CDS1.7. Among new phenotypes there were such that have not been described so far in cucumber: ginkgolike leaf (gll), yellow-green chlorophyll mutants (y-gc), serrate margin of corolla in male and female flowers (smc).