Abstract:
The present study was undertaken on bottle gourd in a 10 x 10 diallel cross excluding reciprocal. The 45 F
1 hybrid along with their ten parent were sown in RBD with three replication at the Main Experiment Station (MES), Department of Vegetable Science, N.D. University of Agriculture & Technology, Narendra Nagar (Kumarganj), Ayodhya (U.P.) India to study the general and specific combing ability during Zaid 2017 (E
1) and 2018 (E
2). The selected parental lines are Pusa Naveen (P
1), NDBG-601 (P
2), PBOG-3 (P
3), NDBG-517 (P
4)
, NDBG-603 (P
5), NDBG-624 (P
6), N. Pooja (P
7), NDBG-100 (P
8), Punjab Komal (P
9), and NDBG-11 (P
10) were crossed in the all possible combinations, excluding reciprocals. For
this experiment observations were recorded on all the six plants maintained for 17 metric traits viz. days to first staminate and pistillate flower anthesis, node number to first staminate and pistillate flower appearance, primary branches per plant, vine length (m), fruit circumference (cm), fruit weight (kg), fruit yield per plant (kg), T.S.S. (⁰B), reducing and non-reducing sugar (%), ascorbic acid (mg per 100 g fresh weight) and dry matter content. Parents, P
4 and P
7 during and pooled while, P
1 x P
6 in E
1 and P
2, E
2 had showed significant positive GCA effects indicating their good general combining ability for fruit yield per plant. Parent, (P
1), and (P
6) were also found good general combiners for days to first harvest during both the seasons and pooled. Parent (P
1) was also found as the best general combiners for non-reducing sugars during both the seasons and pooled. Out of significant crosses for sca in pooled for fruit yield per plant the crosses with top sca as well as per se performance were P
4 x P
7, P
6 x P
10, P
2 x P
7, P
3 x P
4 and P
7 x P
8 may be utilized as F1 hybrid.