The Cucumber Genome

Dr. Yiqun Weng is a research geneticist in the USDA-ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit, and Professor of the Horticulture Department, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin. He is a principal investigator for the USDA Cucumber Improvement Program focusing on cucumber germplasm enhancement. Research interests in his program include developing genetic and genomic resources for marker-assisted breeding, molecular mapping and cloning of horticulturally important genes and QTL, cucumber chromosome evolution and domestication, as well as efficient use of crop wild relatives for cucumber improvement. Since 2010, he has authored or co-authored over 100 papers in referred journals in these fields. He has also mentored/trained over 90 students, postdocs, and visiting scientists from nine countries.Prof. Tusar Kanti Behera has 23 years of experience in vegetable breeding and is presently working as a Director at Indian Institute of Vegetable Research Institute, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. He bred 20 varieties/hybrids in different vegetable crops and isolated gynoecious lines in bitter gourd from its feral form. He is working mostly on genetics and molecular breeding of bitter gourd and cucumber. He developed Indian gynoecious cucumber lines using MAS. Awarded with several prestigious awards including Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship,Hari Krishna Shastri Memorial Award, Best Teacher Award for Higher Education, Hooker Award. He is the Fellows of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Indian Academy of Horticultural Science, India. He served as FAO International Consultant in Vegetable Breeding at Libya 2010 and Visiting scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. He published his research work in more than 50 research papers in international journals and edited three books. He has guided 16 postgraduate students for their thesis dissertations at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India.



Dr. Kailiang Bo is a researcher of the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Meanwhile he is taking the position of the deputy director of the department of cucurbits genetics and breeding. He works on the cucurbits genetics and breeding (e.g., cucumber, pumpkin, squash) more than 10 years. Dr. Bo foc