Assessment of Biochemical and Physiological Traits of Native Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.) Genotypes from the North-Eastern Region of India

Spine gourd, a minor cucurbit, is valued for its abundant nutritional content and medicinal properties and the Northeast region of India, being a biodiversity hotspot, hosts a wide variety of genotypes. An experiment was conducted during the summer season of 2023 to evaluate biochemical and physiological characteristics of eighteen native spine gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.) genotypes, collected from various agro-climatic zones of Assam and other Northeastern states of India. The study also included a check variety Indira Kankoda-1, from IGKV, Raipur. Various biochemical and physiological traits observed under the present investigation includes total chlorophyll, relative leaf water, ascorbic acid, crude fibre, moisture, total protein, total ash and total carbohydrate content, along with elemental profiling such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and iron. The result obtained were analysed using one way ANOVA (p=0.05) which revealed that significant variation was found among the traits across the native genotypes. Among them, the genotype SG1 exhibited best performance, followed by SG4 and SG11, while SG17 and SG14 showed lowest in terms of biochemical and physiological traits. Principal component was analysed for traits under study which revealed that first six principal components (PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5 and PC6), having eigen values above one, accounted for 86.40% of the total variations with the proportionate contribution values of 34.86, 16.52, 11.00, 8.97, 7.87 and 7.19%, respectively. The study concludes that genotypes SG1, SG4, and SG11 outperformed the check variety in key traits and hold promise for future crop improvement such as breeding programs under tropical monsoon climatic conditions.