ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Symbiotic Interactions
Gynoecious and monoecious cucumbers drive the assembly of different rhizosphere microbial communities
Liyuan Liao
Xinyan Zhou
Xinni Li
Yan Yin
Ken Chen
Simeng Liu
Shangdong Yang
Guangxi University, Nanning, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
Cucumber sex expression is a key agronomic trait determining yield, but whether its formations is related to rhizosphere soil microbes remains poorly understood. This study compared the soil microbial community structures in rhizosphere between gynoecious and monoecious cucumbers to identify potential associations. The results showed that bacterial genera including Sphingomonas, and other unclassified taxa, were significantly enriched in the rhizosphere of the gynoecious plants. In contrast, members of Rokubacteriales and other taxa were significantly enriched in rhizosphere of monoecious cucumbers. For fungi, genera such as Aspergillus, Plectosphaerella, and Chaetomella were enriched in rhizosphere of gynoecious plants. Conversely, Trichoderma, Emericellopsis, Collariella, and Cordana were significantly enriched in monoecious cucumbers. Correlation network analysis revealed that the rhizosphere microbial network (especially the bacterial community) was more stable and displayed greater interspecific cooperation in monoecious cucumbers. Functional prediction revealed that multiple nitrogen-cycling processes of bacterial communities, including nitrification, aerobic nitrite oxidation, nitrite and nitrate ammonification, aerobic ammonia oxidation, and arsenate respiration were detected in rhizosphere of the gynoecious cucumbers. By contrast, hydrocarbon degradation functions, particularly those for aromatic and aliphatic non-methane hydrocarbons were significantly enriched in rhizosphere of monoecious cucumbers. Moreover, the rhizosphere of gynoecious plants harbored a higher abundance of saprotrophic and symbiotrophic fungi but a lower abundance of pathotrophic fungi compared with monoecious cucumbers. These findings demonstrate that the composition and potential functions of the rhizosphere microbiota differ between gynoecious and monoecious plants, indicating that soil microbes in rhizosphere play a role in the sex expression of cucumber varieties.
Summary
Keywords
cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), Plant-microbe interaction, rhizosphere, Sex expression, Soilmicrobial community structure
Received
13 January 2026
Accepted
18 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Liao, Zhou, Li, Yin, Chen, Liu and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Shangdong Yang
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.