Sweet Melon Breeding : Breeding For Improving Fruit Quality in Sweet Melon (Cucumis melo, L.) and Increasing Its Storability in Two Local Culti

Cucumis melo, L. is considered as a subtropical fruit, belongs to the family of Cucurbitaceae .Melon is one of the important vegetable crops in Egypt and in the world. Fresh ripe fruit is consumed individually or in fruit salad as a dessert. In the recent decades, there is an increase in the cultivated areas of melon followed by the rate of exportation, it was 53036 fed in 1999, 60941 fed in 2001 and become 100167 fed in 2007.The aim of this investigation was to increase the homogeneity of the two studied local melon cultivars, by selfing and selecting the best genotypes for two successive seasons to produce some inbred lines and test them to record heritability, response to selection, correlation coefficient among studied traits and path analysis coefficient between shelf life and several qualitative characters.