Heterosis and combining ability in bitter gourd Momordica charantia L for yield and postharvest quality

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in Vegetable Research farm, Bihar Agricultural College, Sabour (Bhagalpur) during 2016 and 2017 to study the per se performance of parents and hybrids, degree and direction of heterosis and combining ability with gene action for growth, yield and quality and also to study the postharvest quality of promising parents and their hybrids of bitter gourd.The experimental material for this experiment comprised of seven promising and diverse genotypes i.e., Pusa Ausadhi, Jhalri, Kathi No.1, Pusa Rasdar, BRBT Local, Konkan Tara, Solan Hara and NBGH 167 (Standard check). They were crossed in all possible combination in diallel fashion excluding reciprocals to get 21 hybrids. All the 29 treatments (7 parents, 21 F1 hybrids with one check) were grown in randomized block design with three replications with spacing of 2.0 m × 0.5min plot size of 4.0 m × 3 m. newlineThe pooled analysis of variance for design of experiment also showed that the mean squares due to environments and genotypes were found to be highly significant for all the characters under studied. The Per se performance of the parental lines and F1 hybrids for all the characters revealed that a wide range of mean values which indicated that the parental lines involved in this study were genetically diverse and had good breeding value, which confirmed the predictions of analysis of variance. newline newline