Examining the Inheritance of Watermelon Fruit Traits by Hayman’s Graphical Approach

Abstract

Watermelon traits such as yield and other agronomic traits are highly environmentally sensitive and regulated by multiple genes; therefore, by understanding the genetic structure, the heritability and genetic influence of different traits can improve them. Five watermelon lines were crossed in a $5\times 5$ full diallel parental design to estimate the genetic effect and heritability of fruit traits. Treatments were evaluated on the farm using a random complete block design. Analysis of the results showed a significant difference between genotypes, which was observed for all the studied traits at the probability level of 1%. Hayman’s graphical method showed that the contribution of the nonadditive effects was more important than that of the additive effect to control most of the traits. Fruit maturation and pericarp thickness traits were regulated by incomplete dominance gene effects, and other traits were regulated by overdominance effects. The trait heritability varied between at least 0.013 and 0.352 for the fruit weight and fruit number, respectively. Results demonstrated that some traits can be modified based on the heterozygosity and production of hybrid variety methods, while the hybrid and selection in an advanced generation method can be suggested in watermelon breeding programs to breed other traits.