Determining the agronomic characteristics of Turkish watermelon genotypes for developing breeding lines

Abstract

Watermelon is an important vegetable in Turkey with approximately four million tonnes of annual production. Despite a wide range of morphological diversity in Turkish watermelons, mainly imported hybrid watermelon cultivars are used in production due to high yield and quality. The watermelon genebank in the Department of Horticulture in Cukurova University consists of 475 accessions collected from different regions of Turkey and provided from different genebanks of the world. These watermelon genetic resources were morphologically characterized, elite accessions that were chosen and self-pollinated for use in breeding studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the horticultural characteristics of promising watermelon genotypes for two years. Length of main stem, diameter of main stem, number of branches per plant, number of nodes on main stem, yield, fruit weight, fruit length, fruit diameter, rind thickness and total soluble solids were measured in all genotypes. Data analysis indicated that the Turkish genotypes had high diversity for plant and fruit characteristics.