Seasonal Variation and Genotypic Variability Studies on bottle Gourd for Yield and it's Attributing traits

A field study on seasonal variability bottle gourd was conducted at Vegetable Research Farm, BAU, Sabour, Bhagalpur, Bihar, India during early winter season and early summer season, 2013 and summer season, 2014 to know the genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance for eleven yield and its contributing traits in nine bottle gourd genotypes. Highly significant treatment differences for all traits in the three environments viz., E₁, E₂ and E₃ except for fruit circumference in E₂ and vine length in E₃, represent inherent genetic difference among the genotypes. The field condition revealed that PCV was higher than the GCV in all environments and pooled for most of traits. The moderate to high heritability in broad sense (51% – 80%) in the different environments and pooled coupled with high genetic advance in per cent of mean (23.11% – 30.72%) in all environments and pooled for number of fruits per vine, that indicates the preponderance of additive gene action and better scope for improvement of these characters would be effective through selection of genotype. The promising genotypes identified in order to merit of fruit yield per plant were Pusa Naveen and HZP-RC-1 for early maturity and high yielding in all environments and polled.

The genotypes, Pusa Naveen, HZP-RC-1, Rajendra Chamtakar and Pusa Shantusti can be used effectively as donor parent for hybridization programme in environment.

Average fruit weight, fruit length, and number of fruits per vine in all environments and pooled, indicates High heritability in broad sense (moderate to high on the basis of different season) with genetic advance.