Assessment of Factors Influencing Agrobacterium Mediated Transformation in Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L)

Five day old cotyledon explants of Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L) cv Poinsett 76 were cocultivated with two Agrobacterium strains (EHA105 and LBA 4404) each carrying GUS as the reporter gene and npt-II as the selection marker gene in the T-DNA region of the vector. Transformed shoots were selected at 150 mg/L kanamycin. A two day cocultivation coupled with $20\;{\mu}M$ acetosyringone increased the frequency (8.2 and 15.4 shoots) of GUS expression in the shoots of transformed plant. Among the two Agrobacterium strains, EHA 105 performed better than LBA 4404 in bringing two-fold increase in transformation efficiency (14%) than LBA 4404 (7.4%). PCR analysis was done to confirm the integration of T-DNA into cucumber genome.