Genetic diversity of indigenous bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) genotypes by morphological and molecular marker

Bitter gourd (Balsam pear, Momordica charantia L.) belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae, known for its health promoting benefits. It is widely grown in Asian countries due to its medicinal property, especially in China, India and Southeast Asia. Bitter gourd shown wide diversity for fruit morphology which varies greatly in color, shape, size, and yield attributing traits. The diverse morphological characters of M. charantia provide relatively broad phenotypic variation. Genetic diversity assessments and linkage map construction can increase the effectiveness of breeding programs. This study was conducted to evaluate and characterize the exotic accessions to define their relationship based on Indigenous accessions having some commercial cultivars of economic importance. The mean sum of square was highly significant for all traits indicating the presence of wide range of variability in the genotypes. The results showed that there were significant differences among the genotypes for all the traits under studied. The best genotypes identified from the study were Pusa Aushadhi for earliness, Gangajalee small for number of fruit /plant, BRBTL for average fruit weight and yield/plant and the genotype Konkan tara found best for biochemical traits. Molecular diversity analysis was also carried out using 35 SSR primers, out of which eleven primers showed polymorphism among 21 genotypes. The polymorphism % ranged from -44.11 to 0.97% indicating wide variation for earliness, shape and biochemical traits in genetic diversity. A Dendrogram was constructed by UPGMA analysis revealed four cluster. These markers effectively segregated the genotypes based on genotypic character hence, can be used for both morphological and molecular diversity analyses for further breeding applications.