Combining Ability Analysis for Fruit Yield in Bottle Gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl]

Abstract

Present investigation was carried out during Zaid season 2019-2020 in (Y1) and Zaid 2020-2021 in (Y2) at the Main Experimental Station (MES), Department of Vegetable Science, Acharya Narendra Deva University of Agriculture & Technology, Narendra Nagar, Kumarganj, Ayodhya (U.P) with 21 genotypes with six parental line and their fifteen F1 hybrids of bottle gourd by using diallel (excluding reciprocal) mating fashion. Experiment was laid out in RBD include three replication having each experimental unit with rows space at 3 (m) apart with a plant to plant spacing of 0.50 (m). Significant variances over seasons were found for general as well as sca for all the 17 traits studied during over season pooled which suggested that both additive and non-additive gene action were most important in the expression of all the traits. Pooled combining ability analysis revealed that parents viz., P4, P6 and P2 were good general combiner for fruit yield per plant. An attempt to identify desirable parents based on gca effect as well per se performance of the most of the character studied. Among the 15 F1 crosses P3 x P4, P2 x P6 and P2 x P5 have found good specific combiners for total fruit yield per plant along with most of the other yield contributing characters follow days to first staminate flower anthesis, days to first pistillate flower anthesis, fruit length and  average fruit weight.