EVALUATION OF SOME BOTTLE GOURD GENOTYPES IN RELATION TO YIELD AND ITS CONTRIBUTING TRAITS

Abstract

The present investigation with seventeen genotypes of bottle gourd was conducted during Kharif season (March to September) in 2019 at the experimental field of Shere-Bangla Agricultural University. The experiment laid out in Randomized Complete

Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The main objective of the experiment

was

to evaluate the genotypes of bottle gourd in relation to yield and yield contributing characters. This helped to screen out the suitable bottle gourd genotypes for future breeding programme. Analysis of variance showed that mean sum of squares among genotypes was significant for all the traits. PCV were higher than the GCV for all the characters studied. Number of seed per fruit (98.06), number of primary branches (90.09), fruit length (87.57) and fruit weight (86.84) showed high heritability with high genetic advance. Correlation analysis revealed that fruit yield per plant showed the high positive and significant correlation with number of fruit per plant (g= 0.792, p= 0.797), fruit weight (g= 0.808, p= 0.713) and seed thickness (g= 0.655, p= 0.388) at both genotypic and phenotypic level. The path coefficient analysis revealed that positive and direct effect of fruit yield on days to first male flowering (0.006), days to first fruit harvest (0.067), number of fruit per plant (0.680), fruit length (0.043), fruit diameter (0.009) and fruit weight (0.602). The highest intra cluster distance was found in cluster-II (1.547). Among five clusters the highest inter cluster distance was observed between cluster-II and cluster-III (14.771) and the lowest between cluster-III and cluster-IV (4.919).Considering diversity pattern, genetic status and other agronomic performance, genotype from cluster I, II and V might be considered better parents for crop improvement programme. Genotypes BG- Diana, BG- 6818, BG- Arosh, BG- 6309, BG- Tafsi and BG-6527 are recommended to use as parent in hybridization programme as they have variation in characters like days to first fruit harvest, number of fruits per plant, fruit weight, number of seed per fruit and fruit yield per plant.