Abstract

The family Cucurbitaceae constitutes one of the interesting assemblage of plants. Out of the ninety genera, Citrullus and Cucumis are of prime importance as they include common edible fruits like watermelon, muskmelon, snapmelon and longmelon. The knowledge on sex-forms and sex-ratio in these crops, which present a wide diversity in this respect, is needed before launching in a breeding programme. Sex-expression and sex-ratio of many cucurbits have been investigated by various authors and a few to mention are Tapley (1923), Tiedjens (1928), Correns (1928), Rosa (1928), Erwin and Haber (1929), Whitaker (1931), Scott (1933), Singh (1958), Shifriss and Galun (1956) and others. But the literature on melons is scanty and on snapmelon and longmelon it is almost absent. Dutta and Nath (1969) reported that muskmelon, longmelon and snapmelon were cross-compatible with each other.

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