Inheritance of Some Qualitative Characters in Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria Siceraria Standal.)

The mode of inheritance of fruit shape, colour taste and seed colour in Bottle gourd was studied in the F_1; F₂ and back-cross generations. Disk shaped fruit was found to be dominant over round, disk shape fruit was also dominant over bottle shape. There characters showed monogenic inheritance in the ratio of 3:1, In another cross between round shape and dumb-bell, in F₂ segregating population fruit shape character was recorded in the modified digenic ratio of 9 club: 3 round: 4 dumbbell. Dark green colour of the fruit was found to be dominant over light green and that the character was monogenically inherited. Bitter fruit taste was dominant over sweet and they were differentiated by single gene difference. Brown seed colour was also found to be dominant over light brown and the mode of segregation was governed by a pair of genes.