Inheritance of yield and its components in pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Ouch. ex Poir.)

Abstract

Ascorbic acid and ~-carotene contents are major antioxidants trait found in pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch. ex Poir.) [1]. Pumpkin had lot of variability for yield and its components. Many genetic models based on certain assumptions were proposed for the estimation of gene effects. Most of these were developed to estimate the relative importance of additive and dominance gene effects [2]. The present experiment was conducted to analyse the nature and magnitude of different types of gene effects and discuss the implications in the development of appropriate breeding methodology towards evolution of high yielding varieties. The experimental material consisted of 4 crosses (BP-18 x NDPK-130, IVPK-226-8 x IVPK-227-7, Pumpkin-01 x MKB/SP-01, MKB/SP-02 x KPS-1), involving 8 parents of diverse pedigree origin. Six generation viz., Pl, P2 Fl, F2, BCl and BC2 of four crosses were grown in randomized block design with three replication during summer and kharif 2003 (two season). Ten randomly selected plants from each of Pl, P2, F1S, 20 plants each of BC1S, BC2S and 30 plants from F2S in each replication used for observation on fruits per plant, fruit weight (kg), polar circumference of fruit (cm), equatorial circumference of fruit (cm), number of ridges per fruit, hundred seed weight (g) and yield per plant (kg). The recorded data were subjected to scaling test for testing the adequacy of additive, dominance model [3]. In the event of inadequacy of additive-dominance model weighted analysis of [4] was used for estimating the various components of generation means.