Character association studies in bottle gourd

Abstract

The present investigations were undertaken on twelve genotypes to study the association of important metric traits by correlation analysis and to determine the direct and indirect effects of the components of yield by path analysis in bottle gourd. Results revealed that the magnitude of genotypic correlation coefficients was higher than their corresponding phenotypic ones for most of the characters.The partitioning of genotypic correlation coefficients of prominent yield components with edible fruit yield per plant, into direct and indirect effects following path analysis indicated that the number of fruits per plant exhibited the highest positive direct effect on edible fruit yield per plant. The present findings indicated that the characters viz., number of fruits per plant, edible fruit weight and number of seeds per fruit and days to first fruit harvest, days to first pistillate and staminate flower anthesis were the major yield contributing traits in bottle gourd. It is suggested that more emphasis should be given on these traits over others during selection for improvement of fruit yield in bottle gourd.