Studies on Genetic Divergence in Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Genetic divergence study was conducted on 33 bitter gourd genotypes for twenty characters. These genotypes were grouped into five clusters irrespective of geographic divergence, indicating no parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. Cluster-I was the largest comprising 11 genotypes, followed by Clusters-III and V with 10 genotypes each. Clusters-II and IV comprised one genotype each. As regards cluster means, Clusters-II and IV performed better in most of the biometric characters studied. Maximum inter-cluster distance was observed in Clusters-III and IV, followed by Clusters-II and III, and clusters-I and IV. Intra-cluster distance was highest in Cluster I

Diallel Analysis of Chilli Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Genotypes for Morphological and Fruit Biochemical Traits

Chilli pepper is commercially cultivated as a spice and is also used for the extraction of a colouring agent. Here, we performed a diallel genetic study involving five chilli pepper varieties. Parents and their hybrid were evaluated for fifteen morphological and five biochemical traits over two crop seasons under open field conditions. Variation was recorded for all of the studied traits. Similarly, significant values for general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) variance were obtained for all of the traits. The ratio of σ2 SCA/σ2 GCA indicates that non-additive gene effects were predominant for all the studied traits except for fruits plant−1. Based on SCA effects, cross combinations P2 × P5, and P4 × P5 were determined excellent for flesh thickness, yield components and vitamin C. These hybrids are recommended for multilocation testing to assess their suitability for commercial cultivation. Overall, this work presents useful information regarding the genetics of important morphological and biochemical traits in chilli pepper