~ 2439 ~ Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry 2019; 8(6): 2439-2442 E-ISSN: 2278-4136 P-ISSN: 2349-8234 JPP 2019; 8(6): 2439-2442 Received: 21-09-2019 Accepted: 25-10-2019 Suman Nandi Department of Vegetable Science, Faculty of Horticulture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Umesh Thapa Department of Vegetable Science, Faculty of Horticulture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Swadesh Banerjee Department of Vegetable Science, Faculty of Horticulture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Reva Mondal Bharatpur, Murshidabad, West Bengal, India Corresponding Author: Suman Nandi Department of Vegetable Science, Faculty of Horticulture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Character association and path analysis for fruit yield and it’s contributing traits in cucumber genotypes ( Cucumis sativus L.) under naturally ventilated polyhouse during off season Suman Nandi, Umesh Thapa, Swadesh Banerjee and Reva Mondal Abstract Ten cucumber genotypes were evaluated at B.C.K.V. under naturally ventilated polyhouse during 2016- 17. This study was conducted to examine relationship between important traits of cucumber and their direct and indirect effects on yield. The relationships between fruit yield and yield components in cucumber genotypes were investigated as well as how those relationships changed with selection for improved fruit yield. In this study, genotypic correlation was higher than phenotypic correlations indicating the highly heritable nature of the traits. Correlation studies revealed that intermodal length has exhibited highly significant positive association with fruit yield per plant followed by fruit length, fruit weight, number of fruits per plant and vine length. Direct selection based on these traits would improve yield. The path coefficient analysis revealed that the days to fifty percent flowering, number of fruits per vine, internodal length, fruit weight, fruit length, fruit diameter, TSS and moisture percentage have direct positive phenotypic and genotypic effect on yield. Future breeding should focus on selecting the characters having direct effects to improve yield per plot. Keywords: cucumber genotypes, correlation, path-coefficient analysis Introduction Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is one of the most important cucurbitaceous vegetable crops grown extensively in tropical and subtropical parts of the country. It is grown for its tender fruits, which are consumed either raw as salad, cooked as vegetable or as pickling cucumber in its immature stage (Sharma et al., 2017) [15] .Cucumber is a thermophilic and frost susceptible species growing best at a temperature above 20 °C. So, Cucumber can be grown successfully in the off-season in greenhouse for higher fruit yield (More and Chandra, 1998) [11] . It is highly cross pollinated crop with large amount of variation for many economically important traits. Yield is a complex character and is governed by polygenic system. Moreover, it is highly influenced by environmental fluctuations. Crop improvement through selection depends not only on fruit yield alone but also depends upon the inter-relationship of number of contributing traits as because yield is a complex polygenic character and direct evaluation of this character is difficult. The study of correlation between plant characters is of great importance to a plant breeder as it provides a measure of the degree of association between yield and other yield attributes. Knowledge of association between different characters serves two purposes from breeder’s point of view. Firstly, inter - character relationships are very important for indirect selection for characters that are not easily measured and for those that exhibit low heritability. Secondly, this information makes available to the breeder, the sources of information as the nature, extent and direction of selection pressure among the characters. However, correlation does not provide a clear picture of nature and extent of contributions made by number of independent traits. The path coefficient analysis is partitioned the correlation in direct and indirect effects and thus may be useful in choosing the characters that have direct and indirect effects on yield. Hence, study of correlations (genotypic and phenotypic) and path coefficient analysis of yield would be helpful in selection of yield component traits in the genetic improvement of quantitative traits, which are positively correlated. Adams and Grafius (1971) [1] have mentioned that yield should be considered as end product of a number of traits and breeder should not ignore the principle of balance among these traits. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to assess the nature and magnitude of association among yield and its contributing traits for selecting high yielding genotypes of cucumber (Saikia et al., 1995) [14] .