EVALUATION OF BITTER GOURD (MOMORDICA CHARANTIA L.) GENOTYPES FOR GROWTH, YIELD AND QUALITY TRAITS

Bitter gourd is most popular vegetable in terms of nutritive and medicinal value among cucurbits, it is gaining popularity due to its high market demand.The present investigation in order to evaluate the performance of seventy-five genotypes of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) for different growth, yield and quality component traits was carried out at Vegetable Block, College of Horticulture, Bagalkot during 2022-23 summer season.The experiment with 75 genotypes was laid out in randomized complete block design with two replications.Analysis of variance revealed that the genotypes differed significantly for all the growth, yield and quality parameters in the bitter gourd.Among the genotypes studied, Preethi was found superior with fruit yield per vine (1.82 kg), fruit yield per plot (15.24 kg), fruit yield per hectare (12.58 t/ha) and followed by IC-450520 has performed better for fruit yield per vine (1.54 kg), fruit yield per plot (14.23 kg), fruit yield per hectare (11.84 t/ha).The genotype IC-599421 recorded significantly best performance with respect to earliness parameters like days to first female flowering (38.05), days to 50% flowering (39.80) and days to first fruit harvest (47.80).The better performance was observed for yield attributing traits like fruit length (26.34) in Kashi Pratishta, number of fruits (24.41) in IC-450520, average fruit weight (123.03) in MC-11 and highest ascorbic acid content (139.16) was found in IC-68335.In the current study superior genotypes identified for yield parameters namely Preethi, MC-7, IC-470520, IC-470550, IC-470556, IC-50516, MC-9 and IC-50526.Therefore, these genotypes with high yield may be employed directly in breeding programmes to create cultivars of bitter gourd that have high yielding capacity.