DBGy-201 and DBGy-202: Two gynoecious lines in bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) isolated from indigenous source

Abstract

A wide range of variation in sex forms ranging from the primitive hermaphrodite to the advanced monoecious forms is observed in cucurbitaceous vegetable crops. Among these, the gynoecious sex form has been commercially exploited worldwide for cucumber breeding [1]. Since, the pure gynoecious inbred parent of a hybrid only has female flowers; the open pollinated seeds it produces are F1 hybrids. This reduces the cost of male flower pinching and hand pollination as in case of cucumber [2]. In bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.), reports on occurrence, availability and commercial utilisation of gynoecious lines are very meagre. Zhou et al. [3] reported gynoecism in bitter gourd from China and Ram et al. [4] isolated few gynoecious plants in India. Since, this crop has high male: female sex ratio which varied from 9: 1 to 48: 1 [5] and has very small flowers, it is difficult to pinch staminate flower buds and hand pollinate female flower buds. Thus, isolation and characterisation of gynoecism in bitter gourd has great significance for increasing yield potential either through developing cultivars with high proportion of pistillate flowers or using pure gynoeciuos line for cost effective hybrid seed production.