Genetic Divergence & Path Co-efficient Analysis of Pumpkin

Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch. ex Poir.) is an important vegetable that belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae. In Tamil Nadu, maximum diversity is found for pumpkin's fruit shape, fruit colour, vine length and yield characters. Among the cucurbitaceous vegetables, pumpkin has a place of high value due to its long shelf life, long period of availability, excellent response to vegetable forcing, high nutritive estimates and better transport qualities. This book holds the detailed study to estimate direct and indirect effects of different component characters on yield of pumpkin using path coefficient analysis. Also the study of genetic divergence using Mahalanobis D2 statistics and grouping of genotypes and to identify parental genotypes for hybridization programme based on diversity and per se performance.