Chapter-I

INTRODUCTION
Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl.) is cucurbitaceous vegetable crop
having chromosome number 2n=22. It is one of the important cucurbits in India, both as
rainy and summer season vegetable. The fresh fruit has light green smooth skin and white
flesh. The genus Lagenaria included six species that are distributed in Africa, Madagascar,
Indo-Malaysia and the neotropics. There is only one cultivated species, Lagenaria siceraria,
which is an annual and monoecious. The five other species are wild, perennial and dioecious,
occurring in east Africa and Madagascar. Five wild species of Lagenaria exist in Africa: L.
breviflora (Benth.), L. abyssinica (Hook f.), L. rufa (Gilg.) Jeffrey, L. sphaerica (Sonder)
Naudin and L. guineensis (G. Don) Jeffrey. It was also observed that L. siceraria germplasm
is more diverse than its wild relatives viz. L. sphaerica, L.abyssinica and L. breviflora for
qualitative and quantitative traits. The variability for various characters was found wide in
Europe, India and Japan (Badade et al., 2001; Saito et al., 2008; Kumar et al., 2011;
Schlumbaum and Vandorpe, 2012). Wild species produce small round fruits with strong
bitter taste (Morimoto et al. 2005).
Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl. commonly known as white-flowered gourd, Doodhi,
Lauki (Hindi), Kadoo (Marathi) which is official in Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia. It is one of
the excellent fruit crops for human being gifted by the nature that have all of the essential
constituents that are required for normal and good health (Habibur, 2003).
In India, the total area covered under bottle gourd is 0.223 million ha with production of 3.72
million tonnes and its productivity is 16.68 tonnes per ha. (Anonymous, 2023-24).
The tender fruits of bottle gourd can be used as a vegetable or for making sweets (e.g. Halva,
kheer, petha and burfi), kofta and pickles. The fruit is rich in pectin also, which showed good
prospects for jelly preparation, and the dried shells of mature fruits are hard and are used as
containers, utensils, musical instruments or ornamental items. The tender fruit is good source
of ascorbic acid, beta carotene, Vitamin Bcomplex, pectin dietary soluble fibers and contain
highest source of choline level-a lipotropic factor, a healer of mental disorders, along with
required metabolic and metabolite precursors for brain function, amongst any other
vegetable known till date. Bottle gourd fruits are traditionally used for its cardio protective,
cardiotonic, general tonic, diuretic, aphrodisiac, antidote to certain poisons and scorpion
strings, alternative purgative and cooling effects. A decoction made from the leaf is a very
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 Introduction

good medicine for curing jaundice. As a vegetable it is easily digestible therefore, used even
by patients. Pulp is used for overcoming constipation, cough and night blindness. It is good
for people suffering from biliousness and indigestion.
The bottle gourd fruit is also known to have a good source of essential amino acids as leucine,
phenyl alanine, threonine cystine, valine, aspartic acid and proline, along with fair amount
of vitamin B complex, especially thiamine, riboflavin and niacin. The edible portion of fruit
contains 96.3 per cent moisture, 2.9 per cent carbohydrates, 0.2 per cent protein, 0.1 per cent
fat, 0.5 per cent mineral matter and 11 mg of vitamin C per 100 g fresh weight (Thamburaj
and Singh, 2005). The mineral matter reported to be present are fair amount of calcium (20
mg), phosphorus (10 mg), iron (0.7 mg) and manganese (0.08 mg). The bottle gourd has lot
of variation for different morphological characters like fruit bearing capacity, fruit girth, fruit
length, length of main shoot, number of branchesper plant, number of seeds per fruit, seed
weight, seed length, seed breadth, seed shapeand seed colour (Decker-Walters et al., 2004;
Morimoto et al., 2005; Clarke et al., 2006;Achigan- Dako et al., 2008 and Yetisir et al., 2008).
The principal component analysis of L. siceraria indicates that fruit size, seed size, fruit
shape and seed shape are major components that explain most of the variation in the bottle
gourd (Morimoto et al., 2006; Emina et al., 2012).
Bottle gourd is predominately cross-pollinated crop due to its monoecious nature. The
amount of cross pollination ranges from 60-80 %. It is an annual plant with very large leaves
and branched tendrils, spreading or climbing up to 15 meters. To increase in the genetic
potential of any crop, the major problem faced by the plant breeders is the choice of parents
from gene pool for exploitation of heterosis. Information on heterosis for yield and its
component traits in bottle gourd will be very effective in selection of appropriate parents for
development of superior hybrids. Identification and selection of potential parents based on
their combining ability is very essential for hybrid development. Combining ability analysis
provides guideline for selecting noble parents and desirable cross combinations to be used
for speedy improvement in the formulation of a systematic breeding programs. The
information permits the plant breeders to assess and classify selected parent materials for
their utility in development of high yielding F1 hybrids in bottle gourd.
The presence of significant amount of non-additive gene action is a prerequisite for
exploitation of heterosis. The specific combing ability variance largely is the measure of
dominance variance.
The genetic parameters i.e. heritability and genetic advance provide effective tools to a
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 Introduction

breeder to select a genotype having desirable traits for fruit yield. The expected improvement
in the yield components primarily depends upon the nature and magnitude of heritable
portion of total variation. The information on heritability alone may be misleading but when
used in combination with genetic advance, the utility of heritability estimate increases.
Line x Tester analysis in bottle gourd was carried out as an useful tool for preliminary
evaluation of genetic stock for use in hybridization programme with a view to identify good
combiners, which might be useful to build up a population with favorable genes.
Keeping in view the above facts, present investigation entitled “Heterosis, combining ability
and gene action for fruit yield and quality traits in bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.)
Standl.)” has been planned to fulfill the following objectives:
Objectives:
1. To estimate the extent of heterosis for fruit yield and its attributes,
2. To work out the general combining ability and specific combining ability variances
and their effects for different traits,
3. To find out gene action involved in the inheritance of various characters,
4. To work out heritability (narrow sense) and genetic advance for the quantitative
traits.

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