Inheritance of fruit colour, fruit ridge pattern and related traits through generation mean analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) Prasanth K.1,*, Varalakshmi B. Division of Vegetable Crops, ICAR- Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru- 560089, Karnataka 1Division of Vegetable Crops, ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru, Adjunct campus of ICAR-IARI, New Delhi *Corresponding author, Email: prasanth.k@kau.in Presently at ICAR-KVKMalappuram, Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala
Online Published on 14 September, 2022. Abstract Analysis of generation means in Pp P2, Fp F2, Bj and B2 generations of two bitter gourd crosses viz., IIHR Sel-5-8 x IIHR-144-1 and Arka Harit x IIHR-144-1 were performed to determine the nature of gene action governing fruit traits. All the parents and generations differed significantly for the observed traits. For the cross IIHR Sel-5-8 x IIHR-144-1, Chi-square tests in the segregating generations for fruit colour and fruit ridge pattern were fitted well with the Mendelian phenotypic ratio of 3:1. This indicates that green fruit colour of bitter gourd is governed by single dominant gene and is dominant over white fruit colour. Fruit ridge pattern indicated that the discontinuous ridge of bitter gourd is also governed by monogenic dominant gene and is dominant over continuous ridge. All the quantitative traits studied (peduncle length, fruit length and fruit girth) showed non-allelic gene interaction in both the crosses indicating presence of epistatic gene action. Nature of gene action varied with the character and among crosses and both additive and non-additive gene action was involved in expression of the characters having the duplicate epistasis. This indicates use of reciprocal recurrent selection for improvement of these traits and also the possibilities of arriving at better transgressive segregants by selfing the hybrids developed using such selected materials. Top Keywords Fruit colour, Inheritance, Generation mean analysis, Momordica charantia, Epistasis. Top |