Morphological and molecular characterization of Momordica charantia L

Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) is an important cucurbitaceous vegetable grown in tropics. Among the cucurbits, it is considered as a prized vegetable because of its higher nutritive value, besides immense medicinal properties. The fruits are used as tonic, purgative, stomachic carminative, anti-inflammatory,thermogenic, anti diabetic, etc. Bitter melon is currently under study as a complementary drug in the treatment of diabetes both to reduce glucose levels and oxidative stress, as an antiviral therapy for HIV infection, and as a cytostatic in certain cancers (Lee-Huang et al., 1995). The study was undertaken to elicit information on the nature of variability, correlation, path analysis and molecular characterization of bitter gourd genotypes. The outcome is both growth and yield attributing characters showed high genetic advance over per cent of mean with high heritability. Yield per plant was positively and significantly correlated with yield attributing characters. These genotypes were grouped in to two major clusters based on 143 RAPD markers.The study revealed medium to low genetic diversity in bitter gourd genotypes.