Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

The present investigation was conducted on heterosis for growth, yield and quality attributing characters in bottle gourd. Forty-five F₁ hybrids were generated by half diallel (excluding reciprocals) mating design. These F₁ hybrids along with ten parents were evaluated in randomized block design with two replications at College of Horticulture, Venkataramannagudem during 2019-2020. Observations were recorded for five randomly selected and tagged plants from each treatment for growth, yield and quality attributing characters viz., vine length (cm), number of nodes per vine, internodal length (cm), number of secondary branches (lateral branches) per plant, node number at which first male flower appear, node number at which first female flower appear, days to first appearance of male flower, days to first appearance of female flower, sex ratio (m:f), days to first fruit harvest, number of fruits per vine, fruit length (cm), fruit diameter (cm), fruit volume (cc), average fruit weight (g), number of seeds per fruit, fruit yield per vine (kg), fruit yield per plot (kg), estimated yield per hectare (q), total soluble solids (°B), vitamin - C (mg/100 g). The values of F₁ hybrids averaged over two replications were used for estimating heterosis. The top four heterotic cross combinations viz., Pusa Samridhi × Local Round, Pusa Samridhi × Pant Lauki-3, Pant Lauki-3 × Local Long and Kashi Ganga × Local Round were identified as promising for fruit yield per vine.