CGN melon collection
Melon is part of the Cucurbitaceae family and is closely related to cucumber, watermelon and pumpkin. Melon (Cucumis melo) is one of the most economically important fruit crops. The melon collection was adopted in 2005, more recently than the other fruit vegetables at CGN.
Composition
The melon collection consists of accessions of Cucumis melo including multiple subspecies such as C. melo var. conomon, var. flexuosus and var. momordica. The collection contains cultivars as well as landraces from various countries such as Albania, Egypt, India, North Macedonia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Part of the collection originates from the former Institute for Horticultural Plant Breeding (IVT) or were collected during collecting expeditions. About 30 accessions were collected during a collecting expedition of IPGRI in Pakistan in 1981. In 2017, a collecting expedition took place in Uzbekistan where over 140 samples were collected.
Few accessions are currently available but the collection is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.
Maintenance
Regeneration is carried out in case of insufficient seed viability or nearly depleted seed stocks. Breeding companies assist in the regeneration of melon. Regeneration takes place in insect-free glasshouses on a substrate system where the stems are grown along ropes. Melon is a cross-fertilising species so ten plants are used for regeneration. Fourteen plants are used in case of heterogeneous samples. During the growing season, plants are monitored by the Dutch Plant Health Service for seed-borne diseases in order to prevent seed contamination.
Characterisation
The characterisation of fruit vegetables takes place during regeneration. The fruit vegetables are characterised using minimum descriptors developed by the ECPGR Working Groups. The minimum descriptor list for melon consist of twelve descriptors and can be found at the ECPGR Cucurbits webpage. All characterisation data are made available online and in downloadable files on CGN’s website. The collections are well photo-documented, many pictures of (un)ripe fruits, plants and flowers are available.
Evaluation
About 18 accessions of the collection were genotyped by sequencing in 2014 as part of the “100 Melon Genomes Project”.