Abstract
To investigate the relationship between cell size and sucrose accumulation in melon fruit in response to mechanical restriction, some fruits were subjected to mechanical restriction by enclosing them in spherical acrylic acid resin cages with a radius of 5 cm (designated as the enclosed fruits). The mean weight of the enclosed fruit at 50 days after anthesis was 1,493 g less than that of the control (1,963 g). The mean cell size of the enclosed fruit was 153 μm, which was 162 μm smaller than the mean cell size of the control. The diameter of cells in 50-day-old control fruit varied markedly (100 μm to 600 μm) centering 315 μm, whereas cells of the enclosed fruit were distributed over a narrow range (50 μm to 350 μm) centering 166 μm. Mean sucrose content of the enclosed fruit was 3 g·1−1, one-twenty fifth of the mean sucrose content of the control, and glucose content decreased by restricting fruit growth, but fructose content was almost the same in the two plots.
