Table 1.
The Luffa varieties reported to be grown in Sri Lanka.
Fig 1.
Morphological variation of abaxial (upper row) and adaxial (lower row) surfaces of the leaves of two Luffa spp. A: Asiri; B: Gannoruwa Ari (GA); C: LA33; D: Naga-F1; E: Nadee- F1, F: Niyan Watakolu Yellow Peel (NWYP); G: Niyan Watakolu Green Peel (NWGP) H: LF3522.
Table 2.
Variation of the vegetative traits.
Fig 2.
Morphological variation of the reproductive parts (A: Flowers; B: Seeds; C: Cross sections of fruits; D: Longitudinal sections of fruits; E: Whole fruit / external appearance). The numbers 1–8 indicate Asiri, Gannoruwa Ari (GA), LA33, Naga-F1, Nadee-F1, Niyan Watakolu Yellow Peel (NWYP), Niyan Watakolu Green Peel (NWGP), and LF3522 respectively.
Table 3.
Variation of the reproductive traits.
Table 4.
Variation of days in reaching flowering and harvesting stages.
Fig 3.
PC biplot for the varieties of Luffa spp. derived from the combined PCA of reproductive and vegetative parameters.
Three distinct clusters were obtained.
Fig 4.
Dendrogram constructed for eight varieties of the two Luffa spp. based on principal components calculated from vegetative and reproductive characters, using Complete Linkage and Euclidean Distance.
Fig 5.
The unrooted Neighbour-Joining (NJ) tree constructed using combined datasets of ITS, rbcL and trnH-psbA markers.
Each cluster contains different accessions of similar species as indicated next to the cluster. The L. acutangula and L. aegyptiaca clades that represent Sri Lankan varieties are highlighted in purple and yellow respectively. The three divergent clusters obtained within L. aegyptiaca clade are shaded.
Fig 6.
The SNP and INDEL profile of the eight varieties belonging to L. acutangula and L. aegyptiaca.
Name of the marker and the position of the mutation acquired are given next to the alignment. A high genetic diversity could be observed among the varieties and thus enabled the identification of eight distinct haplotypes based on 30 SNPs and four INDELs present within the nucleotide and plastid genomic regions (A). The UPGMA dendrogram drawn using uncorrected pairwise distances of combined datasets of ITS, rbcL and trnH-psbA markers. The scale bar represents the percentage of genetic distance (B).
Fig 7.
The PC biplot (A) and the Scree plot (B) drawn for weighted scores of the taste panel data.