Character association and path co-efficient analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.).

The experiment was carried out with 58 germplasm lines of bitter gourd originating from different agro-ecological regions at the experimental area of the Department of Vegetable Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India to study character association and path analysis. The correlation coefficients were determined to find out the interrelationship among the characters studied. Yield/plant was found to be significantly correlated with days to last harvest (0.60, 0.70), fruit width (0.34, 0.41) and number of fruits per plant (0.57, 0.55) at both genotypic and phenotypic level which indicated that yield could be increased by selecting these characters. Direct and indirect effects were measured using path co-efficient analysis in order to determine the interrelationship between yield/plant and its components. From path analysis, it is evident that traits such as fruit length, fruit number, non reducing sugar imposed positive direct effect towards yield. Hence these characters may be considered as selection indices in bitter gourd improvement programme.