Abstract
Cultivation of salinity-tolerant crops can help mitigate salinization threats to soil and fresh water resources. This study was conducted to investigate the quantitative genetic basis of yield, yield components, and quality-related traits of salinity-stressed melon (Cucumis melo L.) using 55 melon hybrids and their 11 parents (half diallel). The results of combined ANOVA revealed highly significant effects of salinity and genotype on all the traits studied. Salinity stress influenced the inheritance of all the traits. The lower values of variance components (mainly additive), GCA/SCA ratio, as well as broad- and narrow-sense heritabilities were estimated for saline conditions (ECW = 14 dSm−1) when compared with those obtained under non-saline conditions. Fruit weight was governed by additive effects in non-saline conditions, but largely governed by the dominant nature in saline conditions. Based on the results obtained, especially as reflected by fruit yield, it is possible to develop melon hybrids with higher salinity tolerance than is currently observed in tolerant cultivars. On the other hand, most of the traits contributing to fruit quality are found to be governed by additive effects, allowing for their further improvement through recurrent selection to develop new cultivars of high yield and good quality for cultivation under saline conditions.
Highlights
Among the major abiotic stresses, salinity stress poses a serious yield-limiting problem to agriculture and crop production the world over, especially in arid and semi-arid regions[1]
While genotype × salinity interaction was significant for fruit weight (FWT) and fruit yield (FY), those of general combining ability (GCA) × salinity and specific combinig ability (SCA) × salinity were significant for FWT and FY
The highest positive SCA values under non-saline conditions belonged to H4 × 11 (19.19 t ha−1), H5 × 6 (17.37 t ha−1), and H2 × 9 (15.33 t ha−1) while the highest negative ones were recorded for H5 × 9 (−15.75 t ha−1) and H4 × 10 (−13.31 t ha−1) (Table 6)
Summary
Among the major abiotic stresses, salinity stress poses a serious yield-limiting problem to agriculture and crop production the world over, especially in arid and semi-arid regions[1]. Genes contribute to variations in response to environmental stresses, eventually influence performance and productivity of stressedplants, and are critical for adaptation to unfavorable conditions[16] It follows that it is important to exploit natural variations in crops for abiotic stress adaptation, and important to understand how these variations are affected by various gene actions and how efficiently they can be exploited in plant-breeding programs for adaptation to harsh environmental conditions[1]. It is, most profitable to understand the architecture of quantitative traits such as salinity tolerance for developing salinity-tolerant melon cultivars. While inheritance of TSS in melon grown under non-saline conditions has been already investigated[22,26,27], the genetic basis of TSS under saline conditions still remains to be explored
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