Pollinator Diversity in Bitter Gourd Ecosystem in the Central Tamil Nadu, India | Chapter 3 | Research Perspective on Biological Science Vol. 8

 

Bitter gourd is a tropical vine belonging to the family Cucubitaceae grown mainly in India, China and Southeast Asia. The past two decades have seen unprecedented interest in pollinators and pollination ecology, stimulated in part by concerns about the decline of pollinator abundance and diversity in some parts of the world. Bees are the most studied and utilised pollinators for cucurbit crops throughout the world and provide the greatest contribution to the pollination of cucurbits. The study aimed to document the diversity of insects (floral visitors/pollinators) visiting bitter gourd flowers. A total of 51 species of flower visitors/pollinators were recorded visiting the bitter gourd flowers when recorded from 000 to 1800 hours during the day time, for various needs like the pollen and nectar rewards, to prey on the flower visitors, and to feed on the flowers too. Field surveys were conducted at weekly intervals in two locations in Tiruchirapalli district, Tamilnadu to study the diversity of insects visiting bitter gourd flowers. This includes 19 Hymenopteran insects, 15 Lepidopterans, seven Dipterans and six Coleopterans. Tetragonula iridipennis was the most abundant pollinator, followed by Apis florea, Halictus sp. and Apis cerana indica; while Syrphus ribesii was the dominating Dipteran pollinator. Among the Lepidopterans, Pachliopta hector was the major pollinator, followed by Danaus chrysippus, Tirumala limniace and Delias eucharis. Species richness (S) was at its maximum (26 species) at 0800 – 1000 hours and minimum (07 species) at 1600-1800 hours. Diversity indices were also calculated based on the data, which shows the distribution of a specific group of pollinators at particular hours of the day. All the indices represented the even and uniform distribution of the pollinator groups. Shannon’s and Simpson’s diversity indices were maximum at 1000-1200 hours with 2.52 and 9.18, respectively. Shannon’s evenness ranged from 0.44 – 0.86, and Simpson’s evenness was 0.28 – 0.54 with a maximum at 1000-1200 hours. The study suggests that pesticide applications should be avoided during morning hours to conserve pollinator populations and optimise pollination services in bitter gourd cultivation.

 

 

Author(s) Details

 

Yogapriya Adaikkan
School of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, The Gandhigram Rural Institute - DTBU, Gandhigram, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India.

 

B. Usharani
Department of Agricultural Entomology, Agricultural college and Research Institute, TNAU – Madurai, India.

 

K. Suresh
ICAR-KVK, Agricultural College and Research Institute, TNAU – Madurai, India.

 

Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/rpbs/v8/6400

 

Experimental Study on Character Association and Path Co-efficient Analysis in Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia L.) | Chapter 12 | Cutting-edge Research in Agricultural Sciences Vol.1

 The experiment was carried out with 58 germplasm lines of bitter gourd originating from different agroecological regions at the experimental area of the Department of Vegetable Science, Punjab

Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India to study character association and path analysis. The
correlation coefficients were determined to find out the interrelationship among the characters studied.
Yield/plant was found to be significantly correlated with days to last harvest (0.60, 0.70), fruit width
(0.34, 0.41) and number of fruits per plant (0.57, 0.55) at both genotypic and phenotypic level which
indicated that yield could be increased by selecting these characters. Direct and indirect effects were
measured using path co-efficient analysis in order to determine the interrelationship between yield/
plant and its components. From path analysis, it is evident that traits such as fruit length, fruit number,
non reducing sugar imposed positive direct effect towards yield. Hence these characters may be
considered as selection indices in bitter gourd improvement program.

Author(s) Details

Gurleen Kaur Sidhu
Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Canada

Mamta Pathak
Department of Vegetable Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India.

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