Sweet & Sour Melon

Melon ( Cucumis melo L .) is a commercial crop grown worldwide. Cucumis melo L. includes a very wide variety of cultivars producing fruits of different shape, external appearance and flesh color. Commercial melons generally produce sweet fruits known, for example, as Charentais, Cantaloupe, Honeydew, Amarello, Piel de Sapo, Kirkagak, Hamy, Ananas, Galia and Oriental. These are usually consumed as dessert fruits. Cucumis melo L. also includes non-sweet, commercial cultivars consumed in the Middle to Far East and are used in salads and when cooking or pickling. These include, for example, Alficoz, Faqqous, Chito, Conomon (Pitrat et al (2000) Eucarpia meeting Proceedings: 29-36).

The taste and aroma of melon fruits is determined by a number of factors, including sugars, aroma volatiles, free amino acids, organic acids, pH and soluble minerals (Wang et al. (1996) J. Agric. Food Chem. 44: 210-216). Among the four primary tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty), sweetness is considered to be a very important component of good tasting melon fruits. The flesh of sweet melon fruits has a pH usually above 6.0, but melon accessions are also known to have a much lower pH, as low as below 5.0.

The native trait referred to as sweet and sour melon introduces to melon plant fruits a new pleasant taste in which such fruits have a novel balanced composition of organic acid content, low pH and high sugar contents.

The present invention relates to novel melon plants capable of producing fruits with a new pleasant taste and to the seeds of these. It further relates to fruits of melon plants of the present invention, in which such fruits have specific organic acid content, low pH and high sugar contents. The present invention also further relates to methods of making and using plants and fruits disclosed here.

Varieties

Syngenta commercial varieties that contain the Sweet and Sour trait: Citrum

Patent

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