Cucumber Case Study

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) belongs to cucurbitaceae; one of the most important plant families. It consists of 90 genera and 750 species. Most of the vegetables and certain fruits belong to this family. Cucumber is the fourth most cultivated vegetable in the world after cabbage, onions and tomatoes (Shetty and Wehner, 2002). China is at top of the list with almost 2/3 of all world production between 2000- 2004. Turkey is at the second place with approximately 5% of total production followed by Iran (3.6 percent), the U.S. (2.7 percent) and Japan (1.9 percent). In 2011 global production of cucumbers reached at 60.6 million tons (http://faostat.fao.org), which was among the top ten vegetables produced globally. In Pakistan, cucumber is cultivated on an area of 1087 hectares with annual production of 9618 tons (Anonymous, 2014). It is an annual trailing or climbing vine generally with flowers of both sexes on the same plant (monoecious). Current market hybrids are produced on genetically gynoecious lines. Commercially growing seed lots have up to 10% of monoecious plants to provide sufficient pollen for fruit set but European cucumbers; which are grown in greenhouses, set fruit without pollination (parthenocarpic). A few cultivars of cucumber are parthenocarpic, the blossoms create seedless fruit without pollination.
Viral, bacterial and fungal diseases are chief limiting factors for cucumber production but viral diseases affect crop production significantly. Several mosaic viruses may infect cucumber. Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is a member of the family Bromoviridae, and the genus Cucumovirus. CMV is one of the most important viruses in the world, which infecting more than 1200 species in over 100 families of dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous plants, including ornamentals, vegetables, legumes and other important crops (Palukaitis & Garcia-Arenal,