Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

IDENTIFICATION OF SOURCES OF RESISTANCE AGAINST FUSARIUM WILT IN INDIAN MELON (CUCUMIS MELO L.)

Sayeed Abdulhamid Patel, Vinod Kumar Vashisht and Jaspal Kaur

Abstract

Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melonis (Fom) causes acute losses in melon growing areas all over the world. Fifty melon accessions of muskmelon and its close relatives (snap melon and wild melon) were screened under artificial conditions in a replicated experiment. Seedlings were exposed for five minutes to Fusarium inoculum with spore suspension (1×106 spores mL-1) at expanded cotyledonary stage. Observations on disease incidence were recorded at five days interval starting from 10 dpi. A wide range of disease severity was observed from 0 to 100 per cent. Area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) value array from 0 to 1070 for highly resistant to highly susceptible accessions. Six entries were found to have low AUDPC value (i.e. < 200). Out of 50 accessions, nine accessions namely, Kajri Sel- 1 (0.00%), KP4 HM-15 (0.00%), NDM-21 (0.00%), IC-267375 (0.00%), WM-2014-1 (3.33%), SM-2012-12 (15.00%), MM-314 (20.00%), MM-202 (21.67%) and MM-321 (21.67%) have high level of resistance and three accessions viz., MM-4216 (28.33%), MM-4305 (35.00%) and SM-2013-1 (36.67%) have moderate level of resistance to local Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. melonis isolate. These accessions can be used in resistance breeding against fusarium wilt.