ABSTRACT:

Morphological description and estimation of phenotypic diversity were done on 93 accessions of two species of Luffa. The L. acutangula group was found to have lower overall variation, as indicated by its lower Shannon-Weaver indices, and lower character means compared to L. cylindrica. Overall, correlation among fruit characters were highest but high r values between fruit and vegetative characters also exist. Cluster analysis revealed little differences among the accessions. Two major clusters of the two species were formed as well as several small clusters. Two accessions were found to be probable duplicates while 18 accessions were found to have more variation. The dissimilarities among the accessions were reflected in the two dimensional plot. Outliers were identified and correspond with the single member clusters in the phenogram.