Variance component analysis of plant architectural traits and fruit yield in melon

Summary  A cross was made between a unique highly branched, early flowering line, U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 846-1 (P_1; 7 to 11 lateral branches), and ‘Topmark’ (P₂; 2 to 4 lateral branches), a U.S. Western Shipping melon, to produce an array of 119 F₃ families. Subsequently, a genetic analysis was conducted at Arlington and Hancock, Wisconsin in 2001 to evaluate the segregating progeny for factors likely involved in yield-formation, including days to anthesis, percentage of plants with early pistillate flowering, primary branch number, fruit number and weight per plant, average weight per fruit, percentage of plants with predominantly crown fruit set, and percentage of plants with early maturing fruit. Although, genotype × environment (G × E) interactions were important for some traits (e.g., fruit number and fruit weight), considerable additive and/or dominance variance was detected for all traits. This research provides critical data associated with highly branched melon germplasm including trait correlations and heritabilies (broad- and narrow-sense ranged between 0.28 and 0.91) that used judiciously will allow the development high yielding melon cultivars with early, basally concentrated fruit suitable for once-over or machine harvesting operations.