Molecular Analysis of Stable Mutagenesis in Cucumber Induced by High Hydrostatic Pressure

Two mutant cucumber lines are obtained from the Tianjin cucumber cultivar S9925-3 after treatment with high hydrostatic pressure. DNA fingerprint analyses are performed for the two mutants and their parental wild-type cucumber cultivars by AFLP (Amplified Fragments Length Polymorphism) analysis. A total of 30 randomly selected primer pairs are used for AFLP. Ten specific different bands between the mutants and the wild-type cucumber cultivars are excised from the polyacrylamide gel for DNA sequencing. Alignment of the obtained DNA sequences with NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) database identifies the mutation sites in cucumber genome, which may be the reason of phenotypic changes of the mutant cucumbers. This is the first time that a study has showed at molecular level that treatment with high hydrostatic pressure results in stable mutations in cucumber cultivar. Our results indicate that high hydrostatic pressure-induced mutational breeding can be used as an effective approach for the crop improvement.