VENKATA RAO, P.MADHUSUDHAN, M.V.2018-05-242018-05-241993-09http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810047425Investigations were carried out at StudentsFarm, College of Agriculture and Agricultural ResearchInstitute, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad during summer and winter seasons (April to September, 1992) on growth, bearing habits and temporal dioecism of eleven genotypes of ridge gourd Luffa acutangula (Roxb.) L for twenty eight characters and also the effect of pollen sources on fruit and seed characters. Significant differences were noticed among theeleven genotypes for the characters studied. Significant differences were observed between the seasons for some characters. Accessory bud production was observed in this crop. Character association studies revealed the importance of fruit. number and fruit weight during the selection of high yielding genotypes. In ridge gourd, branching started at earliernodes on main axis and further branches were producedalmost at every node with a few at alternate node and 2 nodes interval. Secondaries were also initiated and produced similarly on primaries. In ridge gourd, male phase started first, then female at later phase which intermixed with male phase on main axis and primaries and then female phase predominated on secondaries. This alternation of sexual phase established the existence of temporal dioecism in ridge gourd and is facultative xenogamy—a mating system and it is an adaptive strategy to maximise the reproductive effort. Regarding the flower production, the femaleflowers were produced almost regularly on all the types of branches. Male flower production was more or less regular on all the branches. The experiment to know the effectiveness ofpollen on fruit and seed characters showed that the pollen from solitary male was efficient in producing desirable fruit and seed characters.ennullThesis