EVALUATION OF VEGETATIVE GROWTH AND YIELD PERFORMANCE OF BOTTLE GOURDS (Lagenaria siceraria L.)

A field experiment was carried out to study the vegetative growth and yield performance of Bottle Gourds- All India Co- ordinated Vegetable Improvement Project (AICVIP) varietal trials (AVT-I) were conducted from 2013 to 2014 at the Department of Vegetable Crops, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications, which included the seeds of the Bottle Gourds entries viz. 2012/BOGVAR-1, 2012/BOGVAR-2, 2012/BOGVAR-3, 2012/BOGVAR-4, 2012/BOGVAR-5, 2012/BOGVAR-6, 2012/BOGVAR-7, 2012/BOGVAR-8, NDBG-104 (C) and CO1 (LC) were chosen for this study. The Bottle gourd genotypes were sown with care in the field during the year 2013 to 2014 at the spacing of 300 X 75cm with the plot size of 7.5 m X 3.0 m. Significant differences were observed among the genotypes for growth and yield parameters. Among the different bottle gourds genotypes tested (AVT-I), the highest fruit yield (253.6 q/ha) was recorded in 2012/BOGVAR-5 followed by 2012/BOGVAR-8 (240.3 q/ha). Whereas the checks, NDBG-104 (C) and CO1-(LC) recorded the yield of 225.5 and 226.4 q/ha respectively