Fruit quality assessment of local and commercial cucumber cultivars

Fresh fruit consumption of cucumber reqired developing and breeding new cultivars bearing high fruit quality in terms of shape, flavor and taste along with storage quality to meet market demands. In order to determine and evaluate fresh cucumber quality related traits a study was conducted using randomized complete block design with three replications. 27 cucumber genotypes including seven greenhous hybrids, five opendoor hybrids, three elite lines and 12 Iranaian local gernpelasm were selected. Some quality related characters such as size, firmness and other texture mechanical properties, dry matter content, potassium content, sugar content etc. were measured. Effects of each genotype on measured characters were significant except for fruit weight, thoughness, dry matter and ash content. Deltagreen hybrid was rated as the best score for the quality of flavor and texture. Principal components analysis showed that eithty percent of the observred variability was explaimed by the first four components. PC1 reperesented mainly mechanical properties; PC2 explains chemichal and physical properties; PC3 reperesemtes mainly physical properties. In sum based on the results of current experiment, the higher quality of flavor and texure were observed in genotypes with high ratio of fruit length to fruit diameter (L/D), low ratio of fruit diameter to pelacental diameter ratio (FD/PD), moderate content of potassium, polysaccharide and soluble sugars and low firmness.