Combining ability for characters related to yield and earliness in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Abstract

An experiment was under taken to study the combining ability analysis using ten parental lines and their 90 F1 hybrids of bitter gourd obtained from full diallel analysis for yield and its contributing characters. The mean squares due to GCA and SCA were signified for all the characters. The ratio of ó2 g/ó2 s was less for yield of fruits per vine, ascorbic acid content and iron content thereby indicating preponderance of nonadditive (dominance) variance in expression of these traits. Out of the ten parents, CO-1 and Preethi were the best general combiners as it showed desirable GCA effects in favourable direction for most of the traits. Regarding the SCA effects MC-105 x MC-10 showed highest SCA effects for total fruit yield per plant and number of fruits per plant. For days to first harvest Preethi x CO-1 showed desirable SCA effects in favourable direction. Hence these parents may be used as one of the parents in bitter gourd breeding programme.