Haploid plants were produced from several Iranian melon cultivars as well as two F1 progeny of “Multiple Virus Resistance Project” via rescuing embryos induced by irradiated pollen. In total, 55 haploid plants recovered from 136 rescued embryos in Iranian cultivars by opening and examining individual seeds. The rate of obtained embryos differed from 5% in ‘Samsoori’ to 0.4% in ‘Talaie’ cultivars. Finding and excising induced embryos through opening and examining individual seeds was a tedious and very time-consuming task. Therefore in second case (F1 progeny of MVRP), liquid culture was applied for detecting the induced embryos. This innovated method allowed embryos to get more developed in the seeds covering resulted in easy detection and rescuing task. Recovering 176 haploid plants from 239 excised embryos showed also advantages of the method in increasing the efficiency of haploid plant production in melon breeding programs. The haploid state of recovered plants was confirmed by both chromosome counting and flow cytometry techniques. A small number of plants spontaneously doubled and the rest were treated by colchicines for doubling. The seeds of doubled lines are under screening for resistance to viruses. Ovary slice culture produced only three plantlets in ‘Khatooni’ cultivar from 126 cultured ovaries, suggesting the low efficiency and possible genotype dependence of gynogenesis method for haploid production in melon.
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