Vol. 11, Issue 3 (2022)

Author(s):
Shilpashree N, M Anjanappa, B Fakrudin, M Pitchaimuthu, RK Ramachandra, KS Shankarappa and Aravind Kumar JS

Abstract:
An experiment was conducted at College of Horticulture, Bengaluru, India during Rabi 2019 with 55 genotypes of ridge gourd. Based on Mahalanobis D² statistics, genotypes were broadly grouped into nine clusters. Cluster I consisting of 21 genotypes, followed by cluster III contained 14 genotypes, cluster VI consists of 7 genotypes, cluster II consists of 5 genotypes and cluster VII consists of 4 genotypes and cluster IV, cluster V, cluster VIII and cluster IX contained each one genotype. Among the different characters studied, fruit yield/vine (26.20%) contributed maximum to the total genetic diversity among the genotypes followed by fruit length (19.06%), average fruit weight (13.60%) and number of branches/vine (10.24%). The maximum inter cluster distance (1173.86) recorded between the cluster VII and cluster IX. The genotypes belonging the clusters with maximum inter cluster distance are genetically more divergent and these genotypes could be used in hybridization programme to obtain promising segregants.