Evaluation of Interspecific Hybrids for Yield and Quality Characteristics in Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia ) is one of the most nutritional and commercially important vegetable crops of the family cucurbitaceae. In the present study, hybrids and parents of bitter gourd were assessed to study the per se performance for yield and quality attributes. A wide range of significant variation was observed among all parents and hybrids under study. Among the parents assessed, Preethi and CO-1 was found highly significant with regard to yield attributing characters viz., fruit weight, fruit yield per plant, fruit yield ha-1 and MCM-1, MCM-2 with regard to number of fruits per plant. The hybrids CO-1 x MCM-2 followed by Preethi x MCM-1 and MCM-1 x Preethi were recorded to be the top performing hybrids for all the quantitative characters like node of first female flower appearance, days taken to first flower appearance, days to 50% flowering, fruit length(cm), fruit girth(cm), fruit weight(g), internodal length(cm), vine length(cm), sex ratio, No of seeds per fruit, No. of fruits per plant, No. of harvest and yield per plant. High ascorbic acid and iron content was recorded in parents MCM-2 and Preethi while it was found maximum in hybrids, Preethi x MCM-1, CO-1 x MCM-2 and MCM-1 X Preethi. Hence based on performance of yield and quality, the hybrids, CO-1 x MCM-2, Preethi x MCM-1 and MCM-1 x Preethi were found to be superior and can be exploited for further studies.