Variability studies in bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria L.)

A field experiment was conducted at All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Vegetable Crops, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar with seventeen genotypes of bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria] in Randomized Block Design with three replications during Post Rabi 2018-19. The analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among the mean sum of squares due to genotypes for different quantitative characters studied except leaf weight, days to flowering and 50% flowering indicating the presence of variability among the genotypes. The high GCV and PCV were observed for fruit circumference (39.26 and 39.65), fruit length (38.04 and 38.82), Fruit girth (33.55 and 32.48), internodal length (24.75 and 28.00), yield per plant (21.33 and 22.98) and plant height (20.71 and 21.38) indicating high variability available in the germplasm for these characters for further improvement. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance as per cent of mean was observed for characters viz., fruit circumference followed by fruit length, fruit girth, plant height, yield and internodal length indicating that these characters were least influenced by the environmental effects and governed by additive genes.