Growth behaviour and fruit productivity of watermelon as an affected with grafting onto different rootstock genotypes

The experiments were conducted on watermelon (Citrullus lanatus L.) at an a private farm in Awlad Amr village, Qena city, Qena, Egypt located between 26° 10′ 0″ N, 32° 43′ 0″ E during the two consecutive spring-summer seasons of 2018 and 2019 respectively to study the effect of three different genotypes used as rootstocks on plant growth performance, fruit yield and quality of three watermelon F1 hybrids. Tongue approach grafting method was used, three hybrids of watermelon which growing on a large scale of the commercial production of watermelons in Egypt namely, Aswan F1, Misr1 F1 and Star F1 was grafted onto three different genotype rootstocks i.e. Cobalt F1, Ferro F1 and New Star F1. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Calculated data revealed that, there are clear significant differences between the grafted and non-grafted plants. Results of yield characteristics and its component, such as fruit weight, fruits length and circumferences and total fruit yield per feddan (ton) (feddan = 0.420 hectares = 1.037 acres), indicated to the superiority of the Misr 1 F1 hybrid which grafted onto Cobalt F1 rootstock, followed by the Aswan F1 when grafted onto Cobalt F1 rootstock. On the other side, Ferro F1 rootstock was poorly adapted with the all commercial hybrids of watermelon under studies.