Journal of Environmental Biology

Heritable variation and trait relatedness in

smooth gourd (Luffa cylindrica L.) genetic resources of Assam

I. Sarma¹*, D.B. Phookan¹, L. Saikia^1,5, J. Saikia¹, A. Sarma², R. Borgohain³, P. Kalita⁴ and N. Sarma Barua²   

¹Department of Horticulture, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat-785 013, India

²Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat-785 013, India

³Directorate of Research (Agri), Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat-785 013, India

⁴Department of Crop Physiology, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat-785 013, India

⁵College of Agricultural Sciences, FGI, Kangpokpi-795 129, India

*Corresponding Author Email : ira.sarma@aau.ac.in                *ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3783-9013

Received: 28.10.2021                                                                                                     Revised: 24.02.2022                                                                                     Accepted: 27.04.2022

Abstract

Aim: The North-Eastern Region (NER) of India is endowed with enormous variability in genetic resources of smooth gourd. The present investigation was carried out to assess the hereditary variation and determine the trait relatedness in a collection of smooth gourd germplasm.

Methodology: The experiment was conducted in a Randomized Complete Block Design with thirty-three smooth gourd germplasm consisting of thirty germplasm collected from Assam, two collected from Nagaland while another (Pusa Sneha) collected from IARI, New Delhi. Genetic variability parameters were estimated using standard statistical methodology.

Results: The percent estimates of both genotypic coefficient of variability (31.36) and phenotypic coefficient of variability (31.83) were found to be the largest in respect of primary branches per plant. Higher estimates of both heritability in broad sense (>60%) and genetic advance as per cent of mean (>20%) were observed for the traits. Marketable fruit yield per plant had highly significant positive correlation with the number of primary branches, internodes, female flowers and fruits per plant and the weight of fruit. At genotypic level, path analysis revealed large direct effects of fruits per plant and fruit weight on marketable fruit yield.

Interpretation: High h² coupled with high GAM observed for the characters substantiates that inheritance of these characters could largely be due to genes with additive effects. Simple selection methods such as mass selection without progeny testing would be efficient for improving the population with respect to such characters. Selecting plants having higher mean values for genetically correlated traits would enhance the marketable fruit yield.

Key words: Correlation, Heritability, Smooth gourd, Variability

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