Performance Evaluation of Vegetative Growth, Yield and Quality of Bottle Gourds (Lagenaria siceraria L.) All India Co-ordinated Vegetable Improvement Project (AICVIP) Varietal Trials (AVT-I)

A field experiment was carried out to study the vegetative growth and yield performance of                    Bottle Gourds- All India Coordinated 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. Lagenaria   siceraria,  known   as   bottle   gourd,   is  a member  of  the  Cucurbitaceae  family. Bottle  gourd, which  is  extremely  strong  climbing,  herbaceous  and monoecious,    is    easily    distinguished    from    other members  of  the  Cucurbitaceous  family  with  its  large white flowers. 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.