This is a traditional variety of cucumber from India, usually available only in the area around the city of Puna. The plant TOOK OFF growing when the temperatures went above 95 F for daytime highs. It is supposed to stay sweet despite the heat. If global warming is going to happen, or global cooling, or whatever changing conditions may be, it is wise to use our global communications to ask others, "what do you grow in hot,dry-yet-humid conditions? How do you plant it, fertilize it, and grow it? How do you know it is ready to eat? How do you prepare it?". Maybe the land grant institutions could catalog and maintain seed banks and information, not just for "germ plasm" as raw material for experiments, but as a rich record of the agricultural ingenuity that enables humans to live and grow food in a wide variety of conditions all over the world. It would be a lot easier to help people adapt with resistant plants that already exist than to say "Give us millions of government dollars, and we'll engineer a resistant plant- sure it'll need a ton of water and specific fertilizers to make up for the fact that the inserted vector hit an essential enzymatic pathway, but it'll be rust resistant!" Can't we just try using what God has already given? We do not have to reinvent the wheel when a very nice vehicle sits in the driveway, fueled and ready to go.
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