Estimates of Genetic Variability, Heretability, Genetic Advance and Genetic Divergence in Bottle Gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Stadle.]

The present investigation was conducted at Department of Vegetable Science, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur-208002 (UP) during Kharif season in 2022. During the study the analysis of variance for 32 genotypes of Bottle gourd in the randomized block design and revealed significant difference for all the 11 characters, this indicated the presence of wide spectrum of variability among the genotypes. The phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than the respective genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) for all the traits, a narrow difference between PCV and GCV were recorded for all of the traits. High heritability and genetic advance as per cent of mean were observed for all eleven characters. The highest heritability was recorded in vine length and lowest for number of primary branches. The analysis of genetic divergence through Mahalanobis D2 statistics revealed that a considerable genetic diversity was found among genotypes. 32 genotypes of bottle gourd were grouped into 5 clusters. Out of the 5 clusters, Cluster IV had ten genotypes, Cluster III had eight genotypes, Cluster II had eight genotypes, Cluster I had three genotypes and Cluster V had three genotypes. Based on present investigation, it was concluded that in general, there was parallelism between genetic and geographic diversity. Maximum inter cluster distance was determined between clusters III and cluster V so crosses among genotypes of cluster III like KLG (8), AZAD HARIT ( 9), BG-7505 (10), BG-7127, BG-7512, BG-7306, BG-7502 and BG-7231 can be made as a parent for getting better hybrids.