Responses of some Moroccan watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) landraces to water stress compared with commercial hybrids
Paper Details
Responses of some Moroccan watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) landraces to water stress compared with commercial hybrids
Abstract
The effect of water stress on 9 watermelon genotypes among which five Moroccan landraces and four commercial varieties. Two irrigation levels were imposed to determine variability on drought tolerance of cultivars. T1 treatment (Well irrigated) received full irrigation which plants received sufficient water to maintain soil water content close to pot capacity, while T2 (limited irrigated) treatment received 50 % of T1. The drought tolerance was estimated by the ratio of the value of a trait under the T1 irrigation level and the value of this trait under the T2 irrigation level. Generally, all traits were affected by water stress and the percentage of reduction was highly variable for all characters. The analysis of variance revealed that genotypic differences were highly significant for all parameters. Genotypes-trials interactions were also highly significant for all characters except for Brix. Moderate to high values of broad-sense heritability were observed for all characters except for rind thickness. The values of heritability in limited watered where lower to those obtained in well‐watered conditions and the Brix had the highest heritability in T1 and T2. Under water stress, the average heritability vary between 0.32 and 0.65 obtained respectively for RT and Brix. In well‐watered conditions, it vary between 0.26 (RT) and 0.81 (Brix). The results also show that only local cultivars have maintained their stable potential while modern varieties were affected by water stress. The results from this study can therefore serve as an initial step to plan the conservation of local watermelon genotypes in Morocco.
Acquaah G. 2007. Principles of plant genetics and breeding. Blackwell, Oxford.
Bates DM, Robinson RW. 1990. Biology and Utilization of the Curcurbitaceae [sic]: Comstock Publishing Associates.
Ceccarelli S. 1989. Wide adaptation: how wide? Euphytica 40(3), 197-205.
Denčić S, Kastori R, Kobiljski B, Duggan B. 2000. Evaluation of grain yield and its components in wheat cultivars and landraces under near optimal and drought conditions. Euphytica 113(1), 43-52.
Edmeades GO, Chapman SC. Lafitte HR. 1999. Selection improves drought tolerance in tropical maize populations: I. Gains in biomass, grain yield, and harvest index. Crop science 39(5), 1306–1315.
Ehdaie B, Waines J, Hall A. 1988. Differential responses of landrace and improved spring wheat genotypes to stress environments. Crop Science, 28(5), 838-842.
El Madidi S, Diani Z, Aameur FB. 2005. Variation of agro-morphological characters in Moroccan barley landraces under near optimal and drought conditions. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 52(7), 831-838.
FAOSTAT. 2012. Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture.
Gusmini G, Wehner TC. 2007. Heritability and genetic variance estimates for fruit weight in watermelon. Horticultural Science 42(6), 1332–1336.
Kumar R, Venuprasad R, Atlin GN. 2007. Genetic analysis of rainfed lowland rice drought tolerance under naturally-occurring stress in eastern India: heritability and QTL effects. Field Crops Research 103(1), 42–52.
Kumar R, Wehner TC. 2013.Quantitative analysis of generations for inheritance of fruit yield in watermelon. HortScience. 48(7), 844–847.
Levi A, Thomas CE, Zhang X, Joobeur T, Dean RA, Wehner TC, Carle BR. 2001. A genetic linkage map for watermelon based on randomly amplified polymorphic DNA markers. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 126(6), 730-737.
Lou L. 2009.Inheritance of fruit characteristics in watermelon [citrullus lanatus (thunb.) matsum. & nakai]. Horticultural Science.
Mujaju C, Sehic J, Werlemark G, Garkava‐Gustavsson L, Fatih M, Nybom H. 2010. Genetic diversity in watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) landraces from Zimbabwe revealed by RAPD and SSR markers. Hereditas 147(4), 142-153.
Nantoume AD, Christiansen JL, Andersen SB, Jensen BD. 2012. On-farm yield potential of local seed watermelon landraces under heat-and drought-prone conditions in Mali. The Journal of Agricultural Science 150(6), 665-674.
Rajaram S, Braun HJ, Van Ginkel M. 1996. CIMMYT’s approach to breed for drought tolerance. Euphytica 92(1-2), 147-153.
Ulutürk Zİ. 2009. Determination of genetic diversity in watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum & Nakai) germplasms. İzmir Institute of Technology.
Van der Vossen H, Denton O, El Tahir I. 2004. Citrullus lanatus. Grubben GJH & Denton OA Plant Resources of Tropical Africa 2, 185-191.
Zhang J, Zhang Y, Du Y, Chen S, Tang H. 2011. Dynamic metabonomic responses of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants to salt stress. Journal of proteome research 10(4), 1904-1914.
Fatiha Hakimi, Said Elmadidi, Abdelhamid Ben Moumou, 2019. Responses of some Moroccan watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) landraces to water stress compared with commercial hybrids. Int. J. Biosci., 14(6), 28-35.
Copyright © 2019 by the Authors. This article is an open access article and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.