Inheritance of Quantitative Characters in Muskmelon

Studies were conducted in the Department of Horticulture, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, to investigate the inheritance of total yield, total soluble solids (T. S. S.) percentage, earliness, number of fruits per plant and flesh thickness in the crosses Hara Madhu x New Melon and Hara Madhu x Japaness Cantaloupe. It was observed that for total yield and earliness, the dominance variance ‘was more prevalent than the additive variance. Over dominance for both the characters was also observed. For T. S. S. content, number of fruits per plant and flesh thickness partial dominance was observed and also the additive gene variance was of sufficient magnitude to suggest that appreciable progress in the improvement of these characters could be achieved by selection among progenies. Medium to high estimates of heritability are rather encouraging because the population can be subjected to early selection and later on one may resort to progeny selection and any other suitably modified procedures.