Recently, researchers from the Vegetable Research Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Horticulture at South China Agricultural University, with joint funding from the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation Youth Promotion Project and the provincial-level Rural Revitalization Seed Industry Revitalization Project, have uncovered candidate genes controlling fruit and seed size in winter melon. Their findings were published in Theoretical and Applied Genetics.
Dr. Wenrui Liu, the corresponding author of the paper and a researcher at the Vegetable Research Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, emphasized that winter melon is a characteristic vegetable crop in South China, with fruit and seed size being key agronomic traits of interest in breeding programs.
The study established a genetic segregation population and identified a candidate gene, BhLS, which simultaneously regulates fruit and seed size in winter melon using forward genetic approaches. This gene, homologous to HOOKLESS1 in Arabidopsis, exhibits a non-synonymous G-C variation in the second exon of the coding region associated with fruit and seed size.
This research not only provides candidate genes for breeding winter melon varieties with different fruit and seed sizes but also lays the foundation for understanding the mechanism of organ size variation in winter melon, holding significant theoretical and practical implications.
For more information, refer to the related paper: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-024-04604-1
