Abstract:
Executive Summary
Morphological and molecular characterization are important procedures to identify the
accessions with desirable traits; to discern genetic relationship among germplasms. Five
exotic germplasm showed morphological variations in growth habit, fruit shape, fruit skin
texture, fruit splitting, fruit aroma, fruit size, and fruit skin colour at fully formed fruit and
fruit skin colour at seed harvest maturity. Quantitative variations were recorded in days of
first flowering, number of primary branches, harvesting time, fruit length, fruit width and
fruit weight, number of fruits per plant, brix index, and yield/plant. The characters, for
instance fruits weight, brix index and yield revealed highest. These three characters should
also be considered for improvement of exotic muskmelon. Highest CV (%) was found in
number of fruits fruit length, (11.75) followed by fruit diameter (11.40) and yield (11.16).
Information about genetic variation has become more critical and deciding factor for any
breeding and improvement effort, is difficult, inefficient, and inaccurate when based on
morphological traits only. Therefore, this investigation was conducted using five
microsatellite DNA markers to evaluate genetic variation among 5-muskmelon germplasm.
All five microsatellite markers were polymorphic. Lower values detected in observed than
expected heterozygosity for all loci, indicating homozygous condition in the sample
population. A total number of 24 alleles were generated by the five primers across 5germplasm.
The
locus
CMGA104
and
CMCTT144
showed
the
highest
number
of
alleles
(6),
whereas
followed by CMAG59, (5) CMTA134a, (4) and CMTA170a (3) number of alleles.
Allele size ranged between 90 bp (CMAG59) to 415 (CMGA104). The Polymorphism
Information Content (PIC) values ranged from 0.301 to 0.689 for the locus CMAG59 and
CMGA104, respectively. So, based on the morphological, quantitative, and molecular
analysis, ME18 and ME26 germplasm can be selected for further breeding programme due
to highest brix index and yield.
