Plant Archives Vol. 20, Special Issue (AIAAS-2020), 2020 pp. 520-522 GENETIC DIVERGENCE ANALYSIS IN BOTTLE GOURD [LAGENARIA SICERARIA (MOL.) STANDL] 1 Department of Horticulture, CSAUAT, Kanpur - 208002 (UP), India 2 Department of Vegetable Science, CSAUAT, Kanpur - 208002 (UP), India Abstract The present investigation was carried out at the Vegetable Research Farm Department of Vegetable Science, Kalyanpur, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur during Kharif season 2016. The th experiment was laid out 52 trains/lines were sown on July 4 2016 in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications. Cluster analysis grouped 52 genotypes of bottlegourd into three clusters. Cluster II had maximum number of genotypes (24) followed by cluster I (15) and cluster III (13). Maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster II and III (3.234) followed by cluster I and II (3.207). Results of experiment indicate that the genotypes included in these clusters are having broad spectrum of genetic diversity. All three Clusters showed maximum value of cluster mean for number of nodes per vine, days to first female flowering and days to first male flowering. 2 Keywords: Genetic divergence, D statistic and Bottle gourd. Introduction Bottle gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Mol.) Standl] is an important gourd vegetable having wide range of uses and is largely cultivated in the tropics and subtropics for its edible fruits. The origin of bottle gourd is Africa and America, according to Culter and Whitaker, this plant is probably indigenous to tropical Africa. Archaeological evidence showed that the presence of bottle gourd was 1200 years old. Thousands of years of cultivation of this vegetable with its cross-pollinated nature has resulted in a large variation for several quantitative and qualitative characters. But, unfortunately very little attention has been paid for genetic up gradation of this crop. It has been well documented that effectiveness of the selection in a crop under plant improvement program is mainly dependent on the greater the genetic diversity in population, more the genetic potentiality and thereby wider is the scope for the improvement of the crop. Among the various breeding methods depend on genetic variability present in base population characters association, cause and effect relationship, heritability, genetic advance and genetic divergence to help the breeder's in making an effective selection in a breeding programme. Genetic variability present in a population is of primary importance for any successful selection programme. Greater variability increases the genetic potentiality and wider scope for improvement in the genotype, to explore the purpose of improvement by 2 selection. The D statistics of Mahalanobis's (1936) provides a powerful tool for measuring the degree of divergence among group and also for selecting parents for hybridization in out breeding and cross-pollinated crop (Rao, 1952; Dubey et al., 2019). Such a study is expected to be useful not only in the choice of the parents for hybridization but also to serve as an index affecting selection. Material and Methods The experiment was conducted at the Vegetable Research Farm Department of Vegetable Science, Kalyanpur, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur during Kharif season 2016, Geographically Kanpur is situated in the Gangatic alluvial of Central Uttar Pradesh between the 25.26º to 26.28º north latitude and 79.31º to 80.34º of east longitude about 125.9 Meter above sea level. Observations were recorded from three randomly selected plants from each genotype on 8 different characters viz., days to opening of first male flower, days to opening of first female flower, Length of vine, Number of branches, Number of nodes/plants, Weight of fruit per plot, Number of fruits per plot, Fruit yield per plant. The data were analysed as per the multivariate analysis of genetic divergence using 2 Mahalanobis (1936) D statistic. 2 D = ∑x dd ij i j I = ij = 1 Where, x = Matrix reciprocal to the common dispersion matrix ij d d = Difference between the means value of two i j population th th For i and j characters respectively. ISSN 0972- 5210 *Corresponding author Email: chaudhary.csa@gmail.com 1 1 2 1, Abhishek , Vikash Rajput , Jitendra Kumar and Saurabh Tomar *