Inheritance of Green Mature Seed-stage Fruit Color in Cucumis sativus L.

Fruit of TAMU breeding line 830397 are green in contrast to the cream or orange fruit of commercial cultivars at the mature-seed stage (MS-S). Inheritance of this trait for green MS-S fruit color in Cucumis sativus was investigated. A new locus, gn, is proposed as well as the elimination of the C locus. MS-S fruit color is controlled by two major genes, R and Gn. Fruit is orange when the genotype is R_ _ and green when the genotype is rrgngn. The cream MS-S fruit color trait is incompletely dominant over green, as the genotype rrGnGn is cream while rrGngn produces mature fruit from cream to intermediate in color between cream-colored and green fruit. Spine color is pleiotropic with or very tightly linked to the R locus, but heavy netting from PI 165509 appears not to be linked with the orange genotype and is polygenic.