Morphological characterisation and principal component analysis studies in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) genotypes

An experiment was carried out with 27 genotypes of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)” at Research Farm of the Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar during Spring–Summer season, 2018. The genotypes were planted in three replications in Randomized Block Design. Considerable amount of variability was observed in all the genotypes for all seven morphological characters under study viz., leaf shape, leaf pubescence, fruit neck, fruit skin color, fruit shape in longitudinal section, shape of fruit at blossom end and shape of fruit at peduncle end. The genotypes viz., IC 85624 followed by HK 113, IC 85610, IC 85605 were found superior in terms of mean performance data of fruit yield and growth parameters and found promising for future improvement programme. The results of principal component analysis revealed that out of all the 16 characters, initial eight characters had more than 0.5 eigen values with more than 91% variability. Of all, PC1 (days to 50% germination) had highest eigen value (0.538) and accounted 34.60% variability, hence, selection of genotypes based on these traits can be rewarding in future breeding programmes.