Bitter gourd, Momordica charantia L., is an important commercial cucurbitaceous vegetable of enormous medicinal value in Asia because of its secondary metabolite content. We report here the characterization and evaluation of open-pollinated (OP) edible South Asian and Southeast Asian types of bitter gourd breeding lines, developed at the World Vegetable Center, for horticultural traits (11 OP) and secondary metabolites (10 OP) and their comparisons with commercial OP and F1 hybrid cultivars. Marketable yields of South Asian and Southeast Asian type breeding lines were comparable to the OP ‘BARI Karella 1’ and the hybrid ‘Benteng’, respectively. The bitter gourd cultivars and breeding lines included in this study exhibited specific patterns for five secondary metabolites (saponins, carotenoids, chlorophyll a and b, and vitamin C): in general, the two cultivars and South Asian type breeding lines contained higher levels of secondary metabolites, e.g. carotenoids, than the Southeast Asian bitter gourd breeding lines. Some of these bitter gourd lines will be released to Asian home and school gardeners after conducting multilocation trials across Asia to improve vegetable consumption as the main task of bitter gourd breeding.
