Cucumber, scientifically known as Cucumis sativus is an important vegetable crop, native to India but widely cultivated across the globe. Extended shelf life is an extremely important trait to be studied in this crop as the fruits are perishable in nature and become unfit for market within 2-3 days of harvesting under ambient condition. Fruit discoloration due to chlorophyll pigments loss, shrivelling due to loss of moisture are the prime reasons for postharvest losses. To increase the marketability of the fruits’ retention of attractive green colour along with minimal shrinkage in the pedicel after harvesting are important traits of extended shelf life. Till now, no information is available reporting the molecular mechanisms and physiological factors responsible for extended shelf-life in cucumber. There is greater need to dissect the molecular mechanism for post-harvest biology and extended shelf life in cucumber to accelerate breeding program.

CsExSLDb (Cucumis sativus Extended Shelf Life Database) is an online relational database of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) transcriptome, from two extreme varieties of cucumber, i.e., DC-48 and DC-83, at two developmental stages viz., 5 DAP (Days after pollination) and 10 DAP in triplicates. It stores the information pertaining to assembled transcripts, differentially expressed genes/transcripts, pathways associated, transcription factors, putative SSR markers, their primers and variants (SNPs and InDels). CsExSLDb catalogues 1,86,184 Transcripts, 1,988 DEGs (distributed in 6 comparisons) and 1278 Transcription Factors from the comparison datasets. It also catalogues 21524 putative SSR markers along with their primers, 1,58,301 and 1,86,635 variants each for condition 1A and 2A respectively are also present. These information and large number of SSRs and variants identified from RNA-seq will be instrumental in linkage mapping, identification of DNA based markers and fine mapping of economically important traits in cucumber.