Study on Paraffin Section Technology of Fruit Tumor Tissues in Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.)

Fruit tumor is one of the importantly external quality traits affected to the economic value of cucumber fruit. In order to obtain the paraffin section technology and study the cytological mechanism of morphological formation for fruit tumor in cucumber, we used the samples of warty fruit line (S52) and non-warty fruit lines (S42 with big fruit spine and S06 with small fruit spine) as materials, and improved some key links such as dehydration, dyeing and dewaxing etc., based on traditional paraffin section technology. Results demonstrated that increasing ethanol concentration gradient during dehydration can shorten the treatment time of each stage to 30 minutes. Samples were stained with Ehrlich's hematoxylin for three days, which was convenient for subsequent operation. Optimal thickness of the section was 8 μm. After twice pure xylene dewaxing, sections could be examined and selected by microscope, which shortened the time for obtaining high-quality section. High quality sections with complete tissue and clear structure can be obtained by the optimized paraffin section technology, which is an effective method to observe the cytological structure of fruit tumor. This study provides a set of complete and efficient operation steps of paraffin section technology for cucumber fruit tumor, which will provide technical reference for anatomical researches on other organs in cucumber and structural similar characteristics of other plants.