Studies on Genetic Divergence in Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia L.)

Genetic divergence study was conducted on 33 bitter gourd genotypes for twenty characters. These genotypes were grouped into five clusters irrespective of geographic divergence, indicating no parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. Cluster-I was the largest comprising 11 genotypes, followed by Clusters-III and V with 10 genotypes each. Clusters-II and IV comprised one genotype each. As regards cluster means, Clusters-II and IV performed better in most of the biometric characters studied. Maximum inter-cluster distance was observed in Clusters-III and IV, followed by Clusters-II and III, and clusters-I and IV. Intra-cluster distance was highest in Cluster I.