SNP marker assisted selection for improving the sugar content in the cantaloupe

This research was carried out with the aim of improving fruit sugar content in cantaloupe, accession Saveh. The ‘Saveh’ was crossed with ‘Galia’ and the F2 population was generated. The sugar content in fruits of parental generations and F2 population was measured using a refractometer. In F2 population 42 plants out of 2100 plants were selected and evaluated. HRM technique was used to determine the genotype of three candidate SNP markers which previously had been reported strongly associated with sugar content in fruit. The HRM analysis was carried out using Real Time PCR. Among the three SNP markers, one of them (SlE1-HRM) showed polymorphism. ‘Galia’ and ‘Saveh’ genotypes had A1A1 and A2A2 genotypes, respectively. After determining the genotypes, 13, 23 and 6 plants were obtained for three genotypes of A1A1, A1A2 and A2A2 , respectively. Unbalanced completely randomized design analysis of variance showed that these three groups had a significant difference in sugar content. The average of sugar content in brix unit (%) for A1A1, A1A2 and A2A2 genotypes was 11.75, 10.85 and 6.68, respectively. The mean comparison with Duncan's method showed that the difference of these average values was significant at the probability level of p <0.01. These results indicate that the marker can well select the plants that have higher sugar content than the parent of Saveh.