Vol. 11, Issue 1 (2022)

Author(s):
PJ Prajapati, RR Acharya, ND Patel, MM Pandya and NA Patel

Abstract:
A set of 124 germplasm lines of muskmelon (Cucumis melo L.) were evaluated in a Randomized Complete Block Design with 2 replications during summer 2019 at the Main Vegetable Research Station, AAU, Anand, India to study the relationships among 14 quantitative traits pertaining to growth, earliness, and yield characters and to help breeders to determine the selection criteria for breeding programmes for fruit yield improvement. The estimates of correlation coefficient revealed that the characters viz., fruit length, fruit girth, fruit weight, fruits per plant and flash thickness showed significant and positive association with fruit yield per plant and should be considered to make improvement in muskmelon for yield. The genotypic correlations were higher in magnitude than the phenotypic correlations in most of the cases, indicating strong and inherent association between two characters. Path analysis based on genotypic correlation showed positive and direct effect of fruit girth, fruit weight, fruits per plant, flesh thickness, total soluble solid, phenol, β-carotene and flavonoid on fruit yield per plant revealing scope for considering these characters for imposing selection pressure for bringing out an improvement in muskmelon yield.