Abstract
Cucurbit plants usually are sensitive to chilling and easily damaged. Although bottle gourds, which are members of the Cucurbitaceae family, are considered as fresh vegetables in some Asian countries, their main use in recent years is to be used as rootstocks in grafted watermelon cultivation. We tested 163 bottle gourd accessions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) genebank for cold tolerance in the early seedling stage. The experiment was conducted using controlled environment chambers with 3 chilling durations (36, 48, and 60 hours) at 4 °C. Chilling damage was rated 0 to 9 (0 = no damage, 1 to 2 = trace of damage, 3 to 4 = slight damage, 5 to 6 = moderate damage, 7 to 8 = advanced damage, 9 = plant totally dead). We rated damage separately for the cotyledons, true leaf, and growing point. Cold damage was higher at a chilling duration of 60 hours, and decreased at 48 and 36 hours. Most tolerant cultigens were PI 491272, PI 491280, PI 491281, PI 491286, and PI 491326. Most susceptible were PI 381845, PI 381846, PI 534556, PI 636137, and PI 668365.
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