Breeding cucumber for quality improvement

Cucumber quality traits like fruit colour, shape, size and its nutritional quality are of prime importance for breeders to improve the crop. Quality in vegetables is a complex character influenced by both genetical and environmental factors. Breeding for quality has been unsystematic and often empirical but significant progress has been made in several vegetable crops. Conventional breeding in conjunction with biotechnology has bright prospects of developing vegetable varieties high in nutraceuticals, edible colours and bioactive compounds suitable for fresh market as well as for food industry. The final goal of cucumber breeding programmes is to develop new improved varieties having elite combinations of many desirable horticultural characteristics. Consumers are seeking new nutritionally rich vegetable varieties/hybrids for new nutrient rich cuisines, different quality attributes and improved convenience and are ready to pay a premium for such produce if their expectations are met and under these circumstances cucumber rich in quality aspect is most demanding.