Inheritance of fruit colour, fruit ridge pattern and related traits through generation mean analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Abstract

Analysis of generation means in P1, P2, F1, F2, B1 and B2
generations of two bitter gourd crosses viz., IIHR Sel-5-8 ×
IIHR-144-1 and Arka Harit × IIHR-144-1 were performed to
determine the nature of gene action governing fruit traits.
All the parents and generations differed significantly for
the observed traits. For the cross IIHR Sel-5-8 × IIHR-144-1,
Chi-square tests in the segregating generations for fruit
colour and fruit ridge pattern were fitted well with the
Mendelian phenotypic ratio of 3:1. This indicates that green
fruit colour of bitter gourd is governed by single dominant
gene and is dominant over white fruit colour. Fruit ridge
pattern indicated that the discontinuous ridge of bitter gourd
is also governed by monogenic dominant gene and is
dominant over continuous ridge. All the quantitative traits
studied (peduncle length, fruit length and fruit girth) showed
non-allelic gene interaction in both the crosses indicating
presence of epistatic gene action. Nature of gene action
varied with the character and among crosses and both
additive and non-additive gene action was involved in
expression of the characters having the duplicate epistasis.
This indicates use of reciprocal recurrent selection for
improvement of these traits and also the possibilities of
arriving at better transgressive segregants by selfing the
hybrids developed using such selected materials.