Improved Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation using antibiotics and acetosyringone selection in cucumber

Forging resilience from fragility : insights on loss of susceptibility in Cucurbitaceae

“…The recalcitrance of cucurbits in agrobacterium mediated transformation and regeneration is the main inhibiting factor in applying the technique in these crops (Zhao et al, 2022). Despite the elaborate pre-existing literature that is focusing solely on cucurbit transformation (Rajagopalan et al, 2005;Zhang et al, 2014;Nasanato et al, 2013;Du et al, 2022) more and more literature is emerging over the last years mainly focused on the application of CRISPR/Cas9 in cucurbits suggesting ways to overcome the difficulties at the regeneration stage when using agrobacterium mediated transformation (Hoogvorst et al, 2019;Pan et al, 2022;Nguyen et al, 2022;Xin et al, 2022;. The aim of the current research is to apply the insights that were obtained from previous studies in cucurbit transformation as well as CRISPR/CAS9 genome editing in order to knock out candidate S-genes in cucumber and melon for three economically important diseases; powdery mildew (PM), downy mildew (DM) and tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (ToLCNDV).…”