Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2018) 7(8): 1082-1092 1082 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2018.708.123 Evaluation of Parents and Hybrids for Yield and Quality characters in Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia L.) K. Mallikarjunarao 1* , A.K. Das 1 , A. Nandi 1 , B. Baisakh 2 , G.S. Sahu 1 and P. Tripathy 1 1 Department of Vegetable Science, O.U.A.T. Bhubaneswar-751003 Odisha 2 Dean, PGF-CUM-DRI, O.U.A.T. Bhubaneswar-751003 Odisha *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Momordica charantia usually reffered to as bitter gourd may be a tropical and subtropical valuable commercial vegetable crop of the family Cucurbitaceae. Bitter gourd has been utilized in numerous herbal medicine systems for a long time because of its malady preventing and health promoting phyto chemical compounds like dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins, flavonoids and antioxidants. Consumption of its fruit juice is extremely helpful for diabetic patients due to its potent oxygen free radical scavenging activity (Sreejayan and Rao, 1991). Fruits and seeds of bitter gourd are consumed together at immature stage and both possess therapeutic properties such as anti-diabetes (Chen et al., 2003), anti-carcinogenic and hypercholesterolemic (Ganguly et al., 2000; Ahmed et al., 2001), charantin (Yeh et al., 2003), hypoglycemic compounds (Jayasooriya et al., 2000), momorcharin (inactivating ribosome; Leung et al., 1997), MAP30 (a momordica-HIV protein that suppress HIV activity; Lee-Huang et al., 1995), International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 08 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com The experiment was conducted at AICRP on vegetable crops, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, India to study the performance of twenty eight bitter gourd hybrids along with eight genetically diverse parents. The analysis of variance for experimental design revealed that the differences among the mean square due to treatments were found highly significant for all the traits. Further variance due to parents and hybrids (within group) were also found significant for all the studied characters. Difference due to parents Vs hybrids were also found highly significant for all characters studied. The parents Phule Green Gold, Improved Katahi and Preethi were observed to be top performing parent for fruit yield per vine and Thusi for number of primary branches per vine and number of fruit per vine. The hybrids Phule Green Gold x Pusa Do Mausami, Phule Green Gold x Preethi and Preethi x Pusa Do Mausami were recorded to be three best performing F 1 hybrids for fruit yield per vine with an yield of 3.13, 3.00 and 2.75 kg, respectively. These top performing F 1 hybrids can be tested in different seasons over different locations for assessing their stability for high yield. Keywords Bitter Gourd, hybrids, yield and quality characters Accepted: 08 July 2018 Available Online: 10 August 2018 Article Info