The number of cloves in a garlic bulb is controlled by axillary meristem differentiation, which directly determines the propagation efficiency. Our previous study showed that injecting garlic plants with gibberellins (GA₃) solution significantly increased clove number per bulb. However, the physiological and molecular mechanism of GA-induced axillary bud formation is still unknown. Herein, dynamic changes in histology, phytohormones, sugars and related genes expression at 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 days after treatment (DAT) were investigated. Histological results indicated two stages (axillary meristem initiation and dormancy) were in the period of 0–30 days after GA₃ treatment. Application of GA₃ caused a significant increase of GA₃ and GA₄, and the downregulation of AsGA20ox expression. Furthermore, the change trends in zeatin riboside (ZR) and soluble sugar were the same, in which a high level of ZR at 2 DAT and high content of soluble sugar, glucose and fructose at 4 DAT were recorded, and a low level of ZR and soluble sugar arose at 16 and 32 DAT. Overall, injection of GA₃ firstly caused the downregulation of AsGA20ox, a significant increase in the level of ZR and abscisic acid (ABA), and the upregulation of AsCYP735 and AsAHK to activate axillary meristem initiation. Low level of ZR and soluble sugar and a high level of sucrose maintained axillary meristem dormancy.

Fruit shape and size are important assessment parameters to evaluate and classify accessions in cucumber breeding. Clarifying the relations of the shape and size of commodity fruits or mature fruits to that of other organs, like seed, leaf, flower and so on, is significant for multitype breeding of cucumber fruit. It can help breeders to predict the shape and size of a cucumber fruit in the early selection and shorten the breeding cycle. In this study, the dynamic morphological observation of fruit length (FL), fruit diameter (FD) and the fruit shape index (FSI) of developing cucumber fruits in different types and the correlation of fruit shape indexes between fruit and other organs were investigated. The results showed that 28 cucumber accessions with different shape and size were classified into four types, namely long fruits, medium long fruits, medium fruits and short fruits. The comparative analysis of FL and FD among different types and different development stages of cucumber fruits showed that the development of FL and FD were both consistent with the model “S” curve, slow–fast–slow, and there existed strong positive correlation between their growth. During fruit development, the shape index was highly positively correlated among ovary, commodity fruit and mature fruit. Besides, both the length and width of cotyledon, true leaf and female flower petal were positively correlated to the FL of commodity fruit. The length and width of seed, length of ovary carpopodium and pedicel length were also positively correlated to the FD of commodity fruit. For seed, cotyledon and true leaf, no correlation was found between their shape index and their FSI.