Department of Horticulture, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture & Technology, Udaipur 313 001.
*Corresponding author's present address: NRC for Orchids (ICAR), Pakyong 737 106, Sikkim.
A field study with diallel analysis (excluding reciprocals) in bottle gourd indicated that the mean squares due to GCA and SCA were significant for all the characters. This indicates variation in GCA of parents and SCA of crosses and significant combination of additive and non-additive gene effects in the expression of the characters. The ratio of σ$2g/s was lesser than one for all the characters except average weight of marketable fruit, node at which first female flower appeared, number of branches per plant and vine length, thereby indicating preponderance of non-additive variance in expression of these traits. Estimates of general combining ability effects showed that parent UL-4 was good general combiner for most of the traits. The SCA effects showed that best specific combination was UL-2 x UL-4 for total yield per plant.
Bottlegourd, GCA, SCA, traits, combining ability, diallel analysis
