Inheritance of fruit traits and generation mean analysis for estimation of horticultural traits in bitter gourd

Inheritance pattern of three fruit traits was studied using two diverse parents, namely, Sel-2 (∼25 cm long, non-prominent tubercles and curved) crossed with small fruited type Pusa Purvi (DBG-34) (∼4 cm long, prominent tubercles and straight). F₁ generation obtained was intermediate (av. ∼10 cm) for fruit length and in F₂ generation variation ranged from 2.5 to 25 cm. This continuous variation in fruit length of progeny by frequency distribution of nine classes with interval of 2.5 cm indicated its quantitative inheritance and more than 4 genes involved in controlling this trait. Distribution curve for fruit length in F₂ generation skewed towards Pusa Purvi, which suggested that short fruit length is partially dominant over long fruit length. The broad sense heritability for this trait was reported to be 97.40% that is heritable variation and selection for fruit length will be useful for its improvement. The inheritance of tubercles and curviness of fruits in bitter gourd, governed by a single pair of nuclear gene and prominent tubercles was dominant over non tubercles. In cross Sel-2 × Pusa Purvi indicated that straight fruit is dominant over curved fruit and governed by a single pair of gene. Gene action for yield and its related traits in bitter gourd was studied using six basic generations (P₁, P₂, F₁, F₂, B₁ and B₂). The results revealed the presence of additive, dominance gene effects and epistatic interactions for all the characters studied in cross Sel-2 × Pusa Purvi indicating the importance of both additive and non-additive gene actions in the expression of the characters. Mean generation analysis for fruit length showed that dominance is the major contribution towards small fruits.