Vimlesh Kumar, D.K. Singh, Prakash Yadav, Sandeep Kumar Pandey4 and Akanksha Tiwari
Abstract
The present study was conducted with aim to know the character association among the horticultural traits and with fruit yield which is important to improvement of the crop. The direct or indirect effect of different horticultural traits on fruit yields of plant was also studied. The study revealed that the fruit yield per plant exhibited significant and positive correlation at phenotypic level with fruit length, average fruit weight and number of fruits per plant. At phenotypic level average fruit weight and number of fruits per plant had high direct effect at both phenotypic as well as genotypic levels, which led to significant positive association with fruit yield per plant. The path-coefficient analysis revealed that direct and indirect effects obtained at genotypic level were markedly different from those at phenotypic level which might be due to varying degree of influence of environment on various traits studied and these were also observed in component variance analysis and correlation studies. On the basis of above study, for improvement of sponge gourd, number of fruits per plant, fruit length, average fruit weight should be given the due consideration.