The effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and deficit irrigation on the yield and sugar content of watermelons (Citrullus lanatus)

Peng-Ming Yang and Song-Tao He
Additional contact information
Peng-Ming Yang: College of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, China
Song-Tao He: College of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, China

Horticultural Science, 2022, vol. 49, issue 4, 225-233

Abstract: Many studies have demonstrated that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and deficit irrigation (DI) have positive effects on the fruit yield or quality. This study aims to test whether the watermelon sugar content and yield can be improved by appropriate amounts of AMF and DI methods and to clarify the underlying physiological mechanism. Diploid and triploid watermelon cultivars and their pumpkin rootstock-grafted seedlings were treated with AMF, DI and DI + AMF in a randomised complete block design with five replications. The results showed that DI significantly reduced the relative water content (RWC), PN, alkaline α-galactosidase activity, but increased the insoluble acid invertase (IAI), sucrose synthase (SuSy) and sucrose phosphate synthase (SPS) activities compared with the well-watered (WW) treatment, which led to a decrease in the fruit yield and an increase in the fruit sugar content. Although the AMF improved the RWC, PN and alkaline α-galactosidase, IAI, SuSy and SPS activities in all the watermelon lines under both the DI and WW conditions, the improvement magnitude of these parameters was more pronounced in the pumpkin-root watermelon lines than the corresponding own-root watermelon lines, especially under the DI condition. The integrated application of AMF and DI increased the fruit yield to a level similar to the WW value in the pumpkin-root watermelon lines and sugar content to an optimal level in all the watermelon lines.

Keywords: pumpkin-root; relative water content; alkaline α -galactosidase; insoluble acid invertase; sucrose synthase; sucrose phosphate synthase (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hortsci.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/108/2021-HORTSCI.html (text/html)
http://hortsci.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/108/2021-HORTSCI.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlhor:v:49:y:2022:i:4:id:108-2021-hortsci

DOI: 10.17221/108/2021-HORTSCI

Access Statistics for this article

Horticultural Science is currently edited by Ing. Eva Karská (Executive Editor)

More articles in Horticultural Science from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().