Studies on character association in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

The present investigation was carried out using 16 different bitter gourd hybrids during rabi summer 2021. Correlation analysis helps in assessing the mutual relationship among various yield attributes and helps in deciding the component characters on which selection could be relied upon for yield improvement. In the present study, the genotypic correlation coefficient was found higher than the phenotypic correlation coefficient for most attributes studied, which indicated the least influence of environment on phenotypic expression of traits. The fruit yield in bitter gourd was found to have highly significant positive association both at phenotypic and genotypic levels with number of primary branches vine⁻¹ at final harvest (0.599 and 0.609), followed by the weight of individual fruit (0.579 and 0.583). The traits viz., fruit length (0.565), fruit girth (0.548), number of fruits vine⁻¹ (0.518) and flesh thickness (0.446) have positive and highly significant association with yield at phenotypic level and at genotypic level the association of fruit girth (0.575), fruit length (0.570), number of fruits vine⁻¹ (0.515) and flesh thickness (0.451) were also found to show similar trend. However, a highly significant negative association with yield was exerted by days to final harvest (−0.421 and -0.455), followed by node bearing first male flower (−0.417 and -0.437) and node bearing first female flower (−0.417 and -0.426).