Beit Alpha cucumbers are small, slender cucumbers, usually 4-6 inches long, with thin, smooth, dark green skin, a small seed cavity, and a crisp, sweet, non-bitter flesh. The variety was bred starting in 1931 at Kibbutz Beit Alpha in Israel's Harod Valley to improve on the region's thinner-skinned but inconsistent local cucumbers; seed was first distributed to farmers in 1936 after several more years of selection. It's also sold as a Persian or Middle Eastern cucumber.
Because the skin doesn't need peeling and there are few seeds, it holds up well raw -- it's a common base for Israeli salad and for tzatziki-style yogurt dips -- and it pickles well too. Beit Alpha is now grown worldwide and is the parent of many modern greenhouse cucumber hybrids.