Investigating the Inheritance Patterns of Yield Traits in Bottle Gourd Using Hayman’s Diallel Analysis

The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic parameters of nine inbred bottle gourd and its 36 F1’s and 36 F2’s [Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.] developed using half-diallel crosses. The experiment was conducted at Instructional Farm, College of Agriculture, Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh. Data from generation F1 and F2 sets were analyzed using the Hayman method. The results indicated that both additive and dominance components were important in the inheritance of the studied traits. However, additive component was lower in magnitude than dominance component for all the characters in both the generations, which revealed pre-dominance of dominance. Over dominance was registered in both F1 and F2 generations for fruit yield and its components. The ‘F’ component has positive as well as negative values in both F1 and F2 generations. Environmental component (E) was non-significant for all the characters except for vine length and number of fruits per plant in F1 generation, as well as vine length in F2 generation. Number of gene groups (h2/H2) showed that inheritance of most of the characters was generally governed by more genes or group of genes in F1 generation, while single gene or gene group was responsible for controlling the traits in F2 generation. Heritability (ns) estimates was low for fruit yield per plant and vine length in both F1 and F2 generations; high for fruit length in F1 and F2. On other hand, number of nodes on main vine, number of fruits per plant and total soluble solids exhibited moderate heritability in F1 but low in F2. Further, average fruit weight showed low heritability in F1 but moderate in F2, while fruit girth exhibited low heritability in F1 but high in F2. The study indicated that genetic improvement in bottle gourd can be done by either employing heterosis breeding or population improvement by recurrent selection for sca.