Drought tolerance on wild and domestic watermelon genotypes

ABSTRACTPhD THESISDETERMINATION OF DROUGHT TOLERANCE ON WILD AND DOMESTIC WATERMELON GENOTYPESM. Zeki KARİPÇİNDEPARTMENT OF HORTICULTUREINSTITUTE OF NATURAL AND APPLIED SCIENCESUNIVERSITY OF ÇUKUROVASupervisor : Prof. Dr. Nebahat SARIYear : 2009, Pages: 259Jury : Prof. Dr. Nebahat SARIProf. Dr. Halil KIRNAKAssoc. Prof. Dr. H. Yıldız DAŞGANAssoc. Prof. Dr. Yeşim YALÇIN MENDİAssoc. Prof. Dr. Halit YETİŞİRThis project was performed to determine drought tolerant watermelon genotypes for regions which have high evaporation rate and temperature degree. The experiment was conducted at GAP Soil-Water Searches and Agricultural Research Institute, in Şanlıurfa in Turkey. The project?s place has semi-arid climatic conditions. Thirty-two watermelon accessions from different region of Turkey especially from South East Anatolia and two watermelon genotypes from Egypt have been used as plant materials.The watermelon genotypes were grown by different irrigation levels in order to determine their drought tolerance level. Three water regimes were applied at the experiment (S1; 100 %-full irrigation, S2; 50 %- S1/2 and S0; 0 %-full drought). The experimental design was split plot with three replications.The following plant and fruit properties were investigated in the watermelon genotypes; leaf relative water content, leaf temperature, chlorophyll contents, leaf water potential, leaf color, leaf area, number of stomata, width of stomata, length of stomata, plant height, number of nods on plant, plant dry matter ratio, main stem diameter, fruit yield, mean fruit weight, mean fruit diameter, mean fruit height, thickness of fruit rind, number of seeds per fruit, fruit juice total soluble solids (TSS), turgorite and final drought resistance test.At the end of the experiment; 24, 25, 86-A, 197, 27, 143, 218, 224, 203, 185, 147, 215, 163, 114 and 59-A genotypes were determined as tolerant, 35 and 39 genotypes were poor tolerant, Crimson Tide and 37 were between tolerant and intolerant line and 234, 325, 332, 330, 154, 243, 149, 98, 177, 212, 184, 117 and 26 were determined as intolerant genotypes.Key Words; Drought, Genetic resources, Citrullus, Irrigation level, Watermelon