Morphological and molecular diversity analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

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Date
2021-02
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Department of Horticultural (Olericulture), BAU, Sabour
Abstract
India is endowed with large amount of genetic diversity of bitter gourd based on morphological characters such as growth habit, maturity and various fruit characters including shape, size, colour and surface texture. However, the yield potential of bitter gourd in India and in Bihar is very low. In Bihar, bitter gourd has an area of about 10,090 hectares having production and productivity of 67,300 MT and 6.7 mT/ha respectively. In India, it is grown in an area of about 96,000 ha having production and productivity of 10,83,000 mT and 11.28 mT/ha respectively. Bitter gourd not exploited to its fullest and still confined to limited areas that too growing with local cultivars only is reason for low production. Being a highly nutritious crop, the breeding work is not up to the mark due to the presence of less genetic divergence between the genotypes. Hence, systematic evaluation of genetically divergent parent is needed for identifying divergent types. Keeping the points in view, the present investigation entitled “Morphological and molecular diversity analysis in bitter gourd (Momordica Charantia L.)” was carried out. The experiment was conducted at the Bihar Agricultural University in the Department of Horticulture (Vegetable and Floriculture) Sabour in the year 2019-2020 to study genetic diversity which involved evaluation of 20 bitter gourd genotypes including one check viz. Kahalgoan Local using morphological and molecular marker systems. The experiment was conducted in Randomized Block Design with two replications at vegetable research farm of the Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur during 2019-20. The present investigation was based on 18 quantitative characters. Significant differences were observed for all the eighteen characters in nineteen bitter gourd genotypes and present investigation documented that significant variability was present amidst the genotypes used. Based on mean performance it was observed that BRBT-1 (3.21 Kg) followed by US 6214 (3.08 Kg), US 1315 (3.02 Kg) and Pusa Aushadhi (2.41 Kg) were found significantly superior from check Kahalgoan Local for the character fruit yield per vine. Multivariate analysis showed that considerable genetic diversity was present in nineteen genotypes of bitter gourd studied and were arranged into six clusters. Cluster I was found to be having maximum number of eight genotypes in it. Cluster III, IV, V and VI were monogenotypic. Ascorbic acid (75.44 %) contributed maximum towards genetic divergence followed by total soluble solids (18.13 %), number of fruits per vine (2.92 %), fruit yield per vine (2.92 %) and internodal length (0.58 %). The highest inter cluster genetic divergence was noticed between clusters V and VI (267906.60) and was followed by clusters II and V (138645.60) and clusters III and V (108837.10). The intra cluster distance range varied from 8235.36 to 9804.83 with highest in cluster II (9804.33) succeeded by cluster I (8235.36). For molecular analysis among the 40 primers screened, only 6 primers showed polymorphism. Morphological diversity based on 18 quantitative traits and molecular diversity based on 6 polymorphic primers were not similar and the grouping pattern was different in the two systems, which indicated the role of environment in the expression of phenotypic traits and the preponderance of non-coding region in total genomic constitution. It can be concluded that, as a wide range of variation for almost all the economically important traits was present in this crop, so there is a vast scope for improvement through different breeding procedure. Based on the clustering pattern adopted through different procedure the diverse genotypes can be utilized for hybridization programme.
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