Character Association and Path Analysis 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 result on phenotypic and genotypic correlation coefficient revealed that fruit yield per plant was significantly and positively correlated with fruit weight (0.799 and 0.856), node at which female flower appear (0.310 and 0.395), leaf area (0.288 and 0.357). However, node at which male flower appear (-0.085 and -0.109) was significantly and negatively correlated with fruit yield per plant at both phenotypic and genotypic level. Further, path coefficient analysis partitioned the correlation into direct and indirect effects. Path analysis revealed that maximum positive direct effect on fruit yield per plant was exhibited through fruit weight, fruit length, days to flowering, 50% flowering and leaf area, fruit girth, leaf weight, seeds per fruit and fruit circumference these characters play a major role in recombination breeding and suggested that direct selection based on these traits will be rewarded for crop improvement of bottle gourd.