Evaluation of different genotypes of snapmelon (Cucumis melo var. momordica Duth. and Full.) grown under agro-climatic conditions of Konkan region

Introduction

Melons are important horticultural crops belong to the family cucurbitaceae. India is being one of the secondary centres of origin of Cucumis melo in which the cultivated forms comprise of 40 species (Whitaker and Davis, 2008) [24] . There are several local genotypes of melons grown in different regions of India. Snap melon (Cucumis melo var. momordica Duth. and Full.) is an underutilized vegetable crop belonging to the family cucurbitaceae, with a chromosome number 2n = 24. Snap melon is commonly known as 'Phoot' which means to 'split'. Snap melon is a locally cultivated dessert melon known as 'Chibud' in Goa and coastal Maharashtra, in areas of Karnataka as 'Hibadihannu' or 'Phoottikai' and in Kerala locally it is known as 'Pottuvellari'. Snapmelon is originated in India and is commercially grown in the states namely Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Bihar. It is very popular in arid and semi-arid regions (Hazra et al., 2011) [10] . The use of snap melon depends on the type of fruits. Sweet or ripe fruits are consumed as dessert, while non-sweet or immature fruits are used as vegetable in some of the regions. Ripe fruits are commonly consumed fresh, whereas immature fruits are used in curries and pickles. It is rich in sugar, vitamin C, minerals and dietary fibres. The fruit of snapmelon contains carbohydrate (3%), protein (0.3%), fat (0.1%), vitamin A (265 IU /100gm), moisture (95.7%) and vitamin C (10 mg /100 gm) (Peter and Hazra, 2012) [17] . Besides nutritional factor, snap melon embraces many medicinal uses. Fruit is commonly used as cooling and intestine cleanser and moisturizer for skin. Fruits are also used for treating burns and abrasions. Fruits improve appetite, cure stomach pain and help in relieving constipation and vomiting. Seeds are antitussive, digestive, febrifuge and vermifuge. Roots are diuretic and emetic. Snapmelon is an annual vine crop. Snapmelon plants have short taproots and a fragile woody stem. The leaves are simple to palmately lobed, placed alternately. Flowers are solitary, with male and female flowers produced on separate nodes of the same plant. Male flowers are produced in clusters, while female flowers often born single. The plant is cross-pollinated in nature, and the fruit is pepo. Snapmelon is grown in well drained, light to sandy loam soil and is sensitive to acidic conditions. Snap melon is warm season crop cultivated in tropical and subtropical climates. It can be grown at optimum temperature of 22 °C. It is a resilient crop which is cultivated as a sole crop in summer season and as mixed crop along with field crops like maize, sorghum and pearl millet in rainy season (Seshadri and More, 2009) [20] . In Maharashtra, it is popularly grown in Konkan region especially Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts during kharif season. However, it shows variation in growth and yield characters in relation to fruit traits like size, shape, colour, taste texture and biochemical composition. Snapmelon is grown in kitchen garden but recently gaining popularity as commercial crop especially during kharif season due to its wider adaptability, short duration, and preference among consumers. Snapmelon is one of the most important underexploited vegetable crop capable of producing high yields per unit area. A large number of local genotypes are grown in traditional but there are only few improved and cultivars are recommended for commercial cultivation. Despite economic and medicinal importance of the crop, due attention was not given towards a crop improvement programme as well as on production protocol. Creating variability by crossing available local genotype will widen the scope for further selection to develop new variety. Snapmelon is highly cross pollinated crop which exhibit considerable variation for different traits in the Konkan region. Evaluating locally adopted snapmelon genotypes for commercial cultivation is priority research area for improving the productivity, uniformity, fruit quality and market acceptance. Assessment of nutraceutical properties is also necessary while identifying the superior genotypes. Hence, there is a need of focused research to evaluate the available variability to select promising high yielding genotypes for commercial cultivation. Hence, it is proposed to conduct experiment entitled "Evaluation of different genotypes of snapmelon (Cucumis melo var. momordica Duth. & Full.) Grown under Konkan agro-climatic conditions".

Materials and methods

The field experiment was carried out in 2023-24 during the kharif season at the Department of Vegetable Science, College of Horticulture, Dapoli. Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli (Maharashtra). A total of 15 locally grown genotypes were collected from Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Raigad and Thane district of Konkan region for investigation based on their variation in morphological character as well as flowering and fruiting habit. These types were evaluated along with the variety Konkan Madhur released by Dr. B. S. K. K. V, Dapoli as Local Check under field conditions and a released variety Pusa Shandar from IARI, New Delhi. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications. Each genotypes were grown at a spacing of 2 m x 0.6 m with sowing of two to three seeds in each pit. The cultural and management practices were adopted according to the package of practices recommended by Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli. The data on growth and yield attributing characters for snapmelon were recorded on five randomly selected equally competitive plants in each genotype and replication. The mean values of recorded observations was computed for each trait and statistically analyzed (Panse and Sukhatme, 1995) [16] .

Result and discussion

The data pertaining to comparative performance of various snapmelon genotypes grown under Konkan agro-climatic condition are presented in Table 2 and Table 3. the results revealed significant differences among the genotypes for all the characters.

Vegetative parameters

Magnitude of various growth parameters is strongly associated with life span, maturity as well as yield. longest vine length was registered in genotype T 14 -Konkan Madhur (2.40 m) and which was at par with genotypes T 11 (2.30 m), T 12 (2.29 m), and T 3 (2.13 m), whereas lowest was recorded in the genotype T 13 (1.29 m). Variation in vine length among the genotypes might be due to genetic make-up of genotype as well as environmental factors, which ultimately responsible for increasing the photosynthetic activities. Similar trend of vine length was reported by Priya (2012) [18] , Shirke et al. (2013) [9] , Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] , Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in Snapmelon and Venkatesan et al. (2016) [23] in muskmelon. [21] in zucchini and Akhter et al. (2023) [2,4] . The highest number of primary branches was observed in genotype T 11 (6.00) which was significantly superior over other genotypes, whereas lowest number of primary branches (3.35) was recorded in genotype T 2 . Similar trend of results were reported by Dhillon et al. (2007) [7] , Muthuselvi et al.

(2019) [14] in snapmelon, Ganiger et al. (2017) [8] in wild melon, Pal et al. (2017) [15] in cucumber and Deshmukh et al.

Flowering behaviour

Earliness is one of the main attribute which is measured in terms of days at which first female flower appearance. The genotype T 3 was observed early (40.21 days) for the first appearance of female flower which was at par with T 11 (41.05 days), 14 (41.10 days) and T 1 (42.34 days), whereas the highest number of days (46.20 days) was observed in the genotype T 1 . Differences in days to appearance of 1 st female flowering among the genotypes, is usually governed by the genetic makeup of the plant as well as internodal length, number of internodes, environmental factor and vigour of the crop. Trends in results were also reported by Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] and Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in snapmelon and Deshmukh et al. (2024) [6] in pumpkin.

The lowest male: female ratio was noticed in genotype T 10 (11.72) which was par with the genotype T 11 (12.02), T 12 (12.21), T 14 (12.42), and T 1 (12.60). Significantly the highest sex ratio was recorded in T 6 (14.60). Low sex ratio (male to female) is a favourable trait in cucurbits and is advantageous as lower sex ratio is obtained when number of female flowers is more. This is in corroboration with the findings of Venkatesan et al. (2016) [23] , Shivakumara (2019) [30] , Omprasad et al. (2021) [29] , Kalaiselvan and Lenin (2023) [32] in muskmelon, Tamilselvi and Jansirani (2017) [31] , Dahatonde et al. (2024) [5] in pumpkin and Aiswarya et al.

The genotype T 12 produced first fruit at lowest node (7.60) which was at par with the treatment T 11 (7.98), T 1 (8.21) and T 5 (8.25). However the genotype T 13 produced first fruit at highest node (11.24). Earliness in fruit set is primarily governed by the genetic makeup of the cultivar. Similar pattern of results was reported by Yogananda (2018) [25] in bottle gourd, Shivakumara (2019) [30] in muskmelon and Pavithra (2021) [28] in watermelon.

Fruit parameters

Variation in various fruit parameters was also observed. Longer fruits were exhibited in the genotype T 1 (27.25 [18] , Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] and Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in snapmelon, Venkatesan et al. (2016) [23] in muskmelon, Joy et al. (2020) [12] in watermelon and Deshmukh et al. (2024) [6] in pumpkin also recorded the similar trend of results in fruit length.

Greater fruit width (20.77 cm) was recorded in the round fruited genotype T 9 which was at par with T 12 (20.31 cm), whereas it was lowest in genotype T 8 (11.65 cm). The higher fruit width and higher fruit length result in to higher fruit weight. Similar trend was reported by Priya (2012) [18] ; Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] and Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in snapmelon, Venkatesan et al. (2016) [23] in muskmelon and Joy et al. (2020) [12] in watermelon.

The highest length to width ratio (2.06 cm) was observed in the genotype T 1 followed by T 11 (2.04 cm), T 2 (1.89 cm) and T 8 (1.86 cm). However, the lowest length to width ratio was observed in the genotype T 13 (1.07 cm). The variation in fruit length to width ratio might have been due to genotypic differences among the genotypes. A similar pattern was discovered by Mishra and Singh (2017) [13] in bitter gourd, Pouyesh et al. (2017) [26] in cantaloupe and Prabhu (2024) [27] in snapmelon. Yield and Yield attributing characters  The data regarding yield and yield attributing characters of different snapmelon genotypes are summarized in Table 3.  The maximum flesh index (72.56%) was observed with genotype T 11 which was at par with the genotype T 5 (67.21%) only. The minimum flesh index (52.21%) was observed in the genotype T 13 . The difference may be due to the inherent character and genetic makeup.  Data in relation to maturation period and crop duration are presented in Table 3 and graphically depicted in Fig. 1. The earliest fruit maturity (31.15 days) from flowering to fruit maturity was noticed in genotype T 11 which was at par with the genotype T 5 (32.15 days) and T 8 (33.61 days), whereas the highest days to maturity were observed in genotype T 9 (38.80 days). This variation might be due to the genetic makeup of the plant as well as the prevailing environmental conditions. The variation in maturation period of snapmelon was also noticed by Priya (2012) [18] . The number of days required for crop duration is usually determined by the genetic makeup of the plant and the environmental conditions in which the crop is being grown. The earliest days for crop duration (84.85 days) was noticed in genotype T 3 which was at par with the genotype T 8 (85.00 days), T 11 (85.20 days) , T 6 (86.12 days), T 14 (86.50 days), T 12 (87.82 days) and T 5 (88.02 days). The genotype T 4 recorded highest number of days (93.01 days) for days to crop duration. Similar results were reported by Priya (2012) [18] , Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] in snapmelon, Venkatesan et al.

(2016) [23] , Omprasad et al [29] . (2021), Akhter et al. (2023) [2] in muskmelon and Bairwa et al. (2018) [3] in ash gourd.

The highest seed weight of 100 seed was recorded in genotype T 11 (13.52 g) which was at par with the genotype T 9 (13.09%). The lowest seed weight of 100 seed (9.00 g) was recorded in genotype T 13 . The results obtained are in lines with those of Priya (2012) [18] , Shrilatha (2021) in snapmelon, Pal et al. (2017) [15] in cucumber, Bairwa et al. (2018) [3] in ash gourd and Dahatonde et al. (2024) [5] in pumpkin.

Yield characters

In respect of number of fruits per plant, the genotypes T 11 (2.71) followed by T 14 (2.65) and T 15 (2.61) were the best performing genotypes among fifteen genotypes. The lowest number of fruit per plant was recorded in genotype T 2 (1.85).

The number of fruits per plant is dependent on number of flowers produced per plant and per cent fruit set which in turn are dependent on the genetic makeup. This is in corroboration with the findings of Shirke et al. (2013) [9] , Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in snapmelon, Omprasad et al. (2021 and Akhter et al.

(2023) [2,29] in muskmelon.

The highest fruit weight (1.50 Kg) was observed in the genotype T 1 followed by T 11 (1.46 Kg) and T 14 (1.44 Kg), whereas the lowest weight of fruit (1.17 Kg) was recorded in genotype T 13 . Average fruit weight along with number of fruits per plant ultimately decides the yield potential of that variety. Similar type of variations related to fruit weight was also reported in snapmelon by Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] , Shruti et al. (2015) [22] in oriental pickling melon, Ganiger et al.

The genotypes, T 11 (3.91 Kg), T 14 (3.78 Kg) and T 4 (3.53 Kg) excelled in fruit yield per plant when compared to other genotypes. Highest marketable fruit yield per plant recorded by these genotypes might have been due to the presence of maximum number of fruits per plant and average fruit weight which is ultimately governed by genetic makeup of the plant. These two characters directly influenced the marketable fruit yield per plant. The similar trend in marketable fruit yield was obtained by Muthuselvi et al. (2019) [14] , Rizvi et al. (2023) [19] in snapmelon, Venkatesan et al. (2016) [23] , Shivakumara (2019) [30] , Omprasad et al. (2021), Akhter et al. (2023) [2] in muskmelon [29] . [9] in snapmelon, Ingle et al.

(2025) [11] in muskmelon and Mishra and Singh (2017) [13] in bitter gourd.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from present investigation that wide variation exist in various growth, yield and yield attributing characters. Significant variation were observed in all the characters. Among the fifteen evaluated genotypes, T 11 (DPL-SM-11), T 14 (Konkan Madhur), T 1 (DPL-SM-1) and T 15 (Pusa Shandar) demonstrated significantly superior performance in terms of the number of fruits per vine, average fruit weight and total fruit yield compared to the other genotypes. Additionally, T 3 (DPL-SM-3) and T 12 (DPL-SM-12) exhibited outstanding performance for earliness traits, including days to first female flowering, number of nodes to the 1 st fruit and days to harvest. The study revealed substantial genetic diversity within the germplasm for traits related to earliness and yield. Such wide variation in growth, earliness and yield parameters among the genotypes provides a effective basis for selecting promising candidates for the development of new high-yielding snapmelon hybrid.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgmentsWe thank Head, Department of Vegetable Science and Associate Dean, College of Horticulture, Dapoli and Staff of Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli (M. S. India) for providing valuable insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research.

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