GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CHARACTERS ASSOCIATION IN BOTTLE GOURD (Lagenaria siceraria L.)

Abstract

The experiment was carried out using seventeen genotypes of bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria L.) at the experimental field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University during March, 2019 to September, 2019. The main objective of the experiment was to measure the genetic variability among the genotypes for yield and yield related contributing characters in bottle gourd. It helps to select the desirable parents (genotypes) for developing new desired breeding populations. Among the genotypes, there were significant variations for all the traits studied here. It was observed that, the high genotypic coefficient

of variation (GCV) was related to 100 seed weight (28.61), number of seed per fruit (27.31), number of primary branches (26.46), fruit length (24.06), and yield per plant (21.62). On the other hand, the low genotypic coefficient

of variation (GCV) was observed for days to first male flowering (1.58), days to first fruit harvest (1.94), days to first female flowering (2.01), tendril length (5.54) and seed length (5.76). In all cases, it clearly indicated that, phenotypic variances were higher than the genotypic variances. The highest heritability was found in 100 seed weight (81.48). But the low genetic advance in percent of mean was observed in days to first male flowering (1.65) which indicated the involvement of non-additive gene effects and these effects were responsible for the expression of this characters, such kind of traits might not be considered for selection. On the other hand, the high genetic advance in percent of mean was observed for 100 seed weight (53.21) and number of primary branches (48.73) per plant with high heritability which indicated the active involvement of additive gene control and selection for such kind of characters would be highly effective for genetic improvement. The highly significant positive correlation was found with days to first female flowering (0.960). The maximum direct contribution towards yield was fruit weight (0.879) followed by no of fruit per plant (0.861). The highest intra cluster distance was found in cluster I (0.992) and the lowest was found in cluster II (0.628). Among five clusters the highest inter cluster distance was observed between cluster I and cluster II (0.364) and the lowest between cluster V and cluster III (0 .004). Considering all the characters related to yield along with associate characters, the genotypes Diana, BG- 7092 and BG- 6818 might be selected as the most promising genotypes for future breeding programme.