Evaluation of various monoecious and gynoecious genotypes of bitter gourd (Momordica charantiaL.) for yield and attributing traits

Abstract

Bitter gourd is one of the significant cucurbitaceous crops with high economic importance. Exploitation of novel traits like gynoecism in particular and yield in general can substantially contribute to the future crop improvement programmes in bitter gourd. In the present investigation, 38 monoecious lines and 6 gynoecious lines were evaluated pertaining to 9 important quantitative morphological traits at the experimental farm of ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi across two seasons of spring-summer and kharif. From the mean performance analysis of all the accessions under study, VRBTG-5 was found to be the best performer among the monoecious lines, whereas, Gy-323 was the best peforming gynoecious line concerning the yield per plant (g). Moreover, for all other major yield-contributing traits, both of these lines have exhibited superior performance over all other accessions across the seasons and can be exploited further in crop improvement programmes.