Estimation of Inter Relationship among the Important Heritable Yield Attributing Traits and Identification of Promising Genotypes of Teasle Gourd (Momordica subangulata Blume Subsp. renigera) under Terai Zone of West Bengal, India

The experiment was conducted during summer seasons at instructional field in Department of Vegetable and Spice Crops, Faculty of Horticulture, Uttar Banga Krishi Vidyalaya, Pundibari, CoochBehar. Twenty-five genotypes of teasle gourd (Momordica subangulata Blume subsp. renigera) were grown in randomized block design with three replications to estimate character association among important heritable traits for establishing the basis of selection and to ascertain promising line for the further crop improvement. Character association and path analysis exhibited that fruits per plant, fruit diameter, fruit length and primary branch could be selection criteria for isolation of germplasm for enhancement of yield. Under this experiment, residual effect was estimated to be 0.18, indicating that the traits under study contributed approximately 78%, which highly supports the incorporation of these traits into the experiment. The Principal Component Analysis minimized the dimension of larger dataset into four components cumulatively contributed to 75.15% of the variation towards total variation with 29.84% in PC1 through size of internode, flower and fruit. Whereas, 23.46% in PC2 through Quantity, yield and early flowering, 12% in PC3 through plant pigments and 9.84% in PC4 through growth and delayed harvesting. It was evident for existing of high degree of diversity among the germplasm available in East India. Among the selected genotypes viz., Nimbong Local 2, Pemling local 1, Malli Dara Local 1, Pedong Local 1, Allipurduar Local 1, Banshihari Local 1 which were attributed for early flowering, fruit size and yield, Pemling local 1 considered most promising genotype.