Food quality attributes of melon (Cucumis melo L.) influenced by grafting

Abstract

Melon (Cucumis melo L.) is an important and valuable vegetable crop that nowadays has a 550ha cultivation area in Hungary. The use of grafting for cucurbits is a growing technique of interest to the food industry. Nevertheless, for melons the practice of grafting is not widespread, in contrast grafted seedlings are widely used by the watermelon growers. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that the food quality attributes can change, due to the grafting. Globally there are not many scientific articles available in this topic. The goal of our study is to provide a systematic review of literature with emphasis on the influence of grafting on melon fruit quality variations and the major advantages of this technique. Over the last few years, the near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electronic tongue method became popular to measure food attributes.