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Effects of vine pruning and fruit thinning on the yield and quality of fruits of four local melon cultivars (land races) “Khatoni”, “Jabbari”, “Haj-Mashallah” and “Ghasri” were investigated. Vine training treatments were as follows:
1 - Topping (cutting off the main stem, leaving two nodes for producing two primary laterals.
2 - Topping plus discarding nil secondary lateral shoots as well as flowers and fruits upto the 6-8th node on the two primary lateral stems (called as Tarash).
3 - Tarash plus keeping only two fruits per plant (called as Gholghiri), and,
4 - Control (no treatments on the vines).
A strip plot design with four replicats was used for this experiment. The results showed that pruning and fruit thinning had no significant effects on the total yield, but the marketable yield was significantly higher at 1% level in “Gholghiri” treatment when compared with the other treetments. There was an inverse relationship between the number of the fruits per vine and the mean weight of the fruits as expected, such that the control with a mean number of 3.6 fruits per vine had a mean weight of 1.68kg per fruit, while the Gholghiri treatment with only two fruits per vine was showing a mean weight of 2.96kg per fruit. Furthermore, because of discarding extera secondary lateral shoots and thinning the fruits in Gholghiri treatment, the number of infested fruits with melon fruit fly (Myopardalis pardalina) was reduced, and fruits ripenned more regulary. Pruning the vines and thinning the fruits resulted to an increase in the lenght of the fruits, the thickness of the flesh and the size of the seed cavity. On the contrary, these treatments decreased dry weight and as a result total soluble solids of the fruits. There was no significant interaction between the four tested melon cultivars and the training systems, and all cultivars showed similar responses to the treatments. For all the measured characters, melon cultivars “Haj-Mashallah” and “Ghasri” were superior to “khatoni” and “Jabbari” cultivars.