Department of Vegetable Crops Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana -141 004
Studies were undertaken for ascertaining the genetics of horticultural traits as well as resistance to downy mildew for chalking out an appropriate breeding programme for developing high yielding, early maturing and better quality varieties/hybrids of muskmelon coupled with high level of resistance to downy mildew. For quantitative traits, the data were statistically analysed by following the generation mean analysis. Additive and dominance gene effects governed the inheritance of days to first fruit harvest in cross C-l (WI-998 x MR-1) while dominance gene effects for number of fruits per vine were important in cross C-III (MS-5 x MR-1). Epistatic effects were noticed for characters viz., days to first female flower appearance, average fruit weight, rind thickness, flesh thickness, TSS content, fruit yield per vine and vine length in all the crosses, whereas for days to first fruit harvest in cross C-l (WI-998 x MR-1) and cross C-lll (MS-5 x MR-1) and for number of fruits per vine in cross C-l (WI-998 x MR-1) and cross C-ll (WI-998 x KP-7). Digenic complete dominance was observed for resistance to downy mildew in parents MR-1 and KP-7. Backcross method can be employed for incorporating resistance to downy mildew. Inter se mating or biparental mating can be adopted in early generations followed by selection in advance generations for deriving high yielding and better quality segregants.
Downy mildew, epistasis, generation mean analysis, muskmelon
