Heterosis and Combining Ability for Growth & Yield of Bottle Gourd

The present investigations was carried out in two years with aims to determine heterosis, combining ability, gene action, heritability in narrow sense and genetic advance in per cent of mean and genetic divergence involving 10 lines (NDBG-504, NDBG-509, NDBG-517, NDBG-522, NDBG-601, NDBG-603, NDBG-749-2, NDBG-11, NDBG-10, Narendra Rashmi), 4 testers (Pusa Naveen,NDBG-624, NDBG-S-5, NDBG-104) of bottle gourd and their 40 F1 hybrids produced in L × T fashion at MES, at the Main Experiment Station (MES) of the Department of Horticulture, Udai Pratap Autonomous College Varanasi (U.P.) India during Zaid 2016-17 and 2017-18. The experiments were laid out in RBD with three replications having each experimental unit of single row with spacing of 3.0 m × 0.5 m.The observations were recorded on parents and F1's for eighteen quantitative traits viz., days to first staminate flower anthesis, days to first pistillate flower anthesis, node number to first staminate flower, node number to first pistillate flower, days to first fruit harvest, vine length at last picking stage (m), number of primary branches per plant, fruit length (cm), fruit circumference (cm), fruit weight (kg).