Production of Doubled Haploid Plants in Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) Through Anther Culture.

As in any other economically important crop, the possibility of producing fully homozygous, doubled haploid lines in cucumber allows for faster and cheaper breeding. At present, the fastest way to doubled haploidy is the production of cucumber haploid plants and duplication of their chromosomes to make them doubled haploid. In this chapter, we describe a complete protocol to successfully produce cucumber doubled haploid plants, including the evaluation of their ploidy level by flow cytometry. Briefly, this protocol involves a first step of anther culture to induce microspores to divide and proliferate forming calli. The calli produced are isolated from anthers and transferred first to a liquid medium and then to a solid medium to induce organogenesis. Organogenic shoots will eventually give rise to entire DH plants.