STUDIES ON GENETIC DIVERSITY USING MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS AND HEALTH BENEFICIAL COMPONENTS IN MUSKMELON (Cucumis melo L.)
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Date
2016-01
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University of Horticultural Sciences, Bagalkot (COLLEGE OF HORTICULTURE, GKVK POST, BENGALURU)
Abstract
Muskmelon is one of the important crops of Cucurbitaceae family and has very wide genetic variability with respect to morphological characters, sex and fruit qualities. The genetic variability of 24 muskmelon accessions provided by NBPGR was studied for growth, yield and fruit quality at College of Horticulture, Bengaluru, during the year 2014-15. Durgapur Madhu and Kashi Madhu were used as standard checks for comparison. The analysis of variance revealed wide range of variability among the genotypes for all the 25 yield and quality traits. The phenotypic and genotypic co-efficient was higher for all the traits except days to 50 per cent flowering, seed length and width, days to fruiting and reducing sugars. The high heritability coupled with high genetic advance as per cent mean were observed for all the 25 traits except for days to fruiting, number of fruits per vine and fruit yield. Correlation studies revealed the significant positive association of fruit yield with ovary length, fruit length, flesh thickness and fruit weight at both phenotypic and genotypic level. The cluster analysis grouped the melon accessions into four major clusters based on the 14 morphological traits. Among the 24 melon genotypes, genotype IC321361 found to be best for traits ovary length, fruit length, fruit yield per vine and antioxidant content, while the genotypes IC321375 and IC321338 showed good flesh thickness than the other genotypes. The wide variability observed in this study could be utilized further for selecting the parents for developing hybrids and melon crop improvement.