The researchers studied different types of bottle gourd plants to see how much they varied in traits like fruit size, branch number, and seed weight. They found that some traits, like fruit diameter and seed weight, had a lot of variation among the plants. These traits were mostly influenced by genes. Other traits, like days to flower and fruit harvest, had less variation and were influenced more by the environment. They also identified some plant types that produced high fruit yield and matured early, which could be useful for future breeding programs.