Line x tester analysis for combining ability in a medicinally important vegetable bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) is a medicinally important cucurbitaceous vegetable crop growing worldwide for its nutritional and medicinal value. Breeding for enhanced bioactive compound, higher nutritional value, yield and quality is a major challenge. Knowledge of combining ability effects in parental lines for yield and yield contributing traits is prerequisite for the development of hybrids in heterosis breeding programs. Hence, our objectives were to estimate the general and specific combining ability of bitter gourd parental lines for its yield and yield contributing traits. Thirteen genetically different parental lines comprising of ten lines and three testers of were crossed in line × tester mating design to investigate general and specific combining ability for yield and yield contributing traits. The combining ability analysis showed that both GCA and SCA variance were significant for most of the characters in bitter gourd lines and tester. On general combining ability (GCA) analysis, BG1 and BG2 were identified as best general combiners for fruit yield, early flowering, and fruit length, whereas BG11 was identified as the most effective tester, showing desirable GCA for early flowering and contributing positively to fruit traits and yield when crossed with suitable lines. Specific combining ability (SCA) effects were higher in BG2 × BG11 and BG10 × BG12 for yield per plant, BG2 × BG13 for fruit quality, BG2 × BG11 for average fruit weight, BG10 × BG12 for earliness and offer valuable genetic combinations for breeding programs focused on improving productivity, earliness, and fruit quality in bitter gourd heterosis breeding program. The result of this experiments confirmed the potentiality of bitter gourd parental lines and can be exploited as parental lines in superior hybrid development.