CORRELATIONS BETWEEN FRUIT’S YIELD WITH HORTICULTURAL TRAITS AND INHERITANCE OF MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS OF SPONGE GOURD (LUFFA CYLINDRICA)

Abstract

Abstract: Enhancing the production yield fornew generations of each horticultural crop needseffective selecting programs to find outexcellent traits forming thisfruit yield. Therefore,this study aims to investigate the correlations between the fruit yield withhorticultural traits, mainly with yield’s components and inheritance of some morphological traitsofsponge gourd (Luffa cylindrica). An F2 population was generated from a cross between sponge gourds GBVN006904 (male) and GBVN005333 (female) at University of Agriculture and Forestry, Hue University,Vietnam. The positive correlations are observed between the fruit yield per plant andthe fruit diameter, fruit weight, and number of fruits per plant (0.901**). The male first flower appearance time showsa significant positive correlation with female first flower appearance one. The peduncle length correlates positively with the fruit length. The fruit length is enhanced when fruit weight increases. The total soluble solids and fruit diameter show a slightly negative correlation. Chi-square analysis for the leaf shape, depth of lobing, leaf color, and leaf pubescence shows a good fit to a ratio of 9:6:1, thus being controlled by duplicate genes interaction. The fruit color (dark-green:light-green) fits well to a ratio of 15:1, giving its control to duplicate genes with dark-green color being dominant, whereas the fruit shape assorts independently according toa ratio of 9:3:3:1. The fruit stripe color exhibits monogenic incomplete dominance, and the curvature of the fruit is a monogenic recessive trait. Fruit yield components, such as the number of fruit per plant, the fruit weight, and the fruit diameter,strongly affect the fruit yield of sponge gourd. The inheritance of morphological traits indicates that most of the traits are controlled by complete dominance at both gene pairs excepted for fruit strip color and curvature of fruit.Keywords: correlation, inheritance, morphological traits, sponge gourd, yield components