Evaluation of Greenhouse Cucumbers for Various Horticultural Traits Under Naturally Ventilated Polyhouse Chaudhari Varsha I.1,*, Kumar Sanjeev1,**, Tank R. V.2 1Department of Vegetable Science, ASPEE College of Horticulture and Forestry, NAU, Navsari-396450, Gujarat 2Fruit Science, ASPEE College of Horticulture and Forestry, NAU, Navsari-396450, Gujarat *email: c.varsha1993@gmail.com
** drsksony@nau.in
Online published on 15 December, 2016. Abstract Availability of greenhouse cucumbers has really revolutionized greenhouse cucumber cultivation in India. But, there is always a dilemma in the mind of farmers to adjudge the potentiality of a cultivar from big list of greenhouse cucumbers floating in the market. Therefore, the investigation was aimed to identify potential cultivar (s) among 16 available greenhouse cultivars in Gujarat at Regional Horticultural Research Station, Aspee College of Horticulture and Forestry, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari, Gujarat during kharif, 2015 in a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications. Amongst the cultivars, ‘CBA910569500’ was significantly superior to other cultivars in respect to vine length at 30 (1.51 m) and 60 DAS (2.14 m) whereas, ‘KUK 9’ recorded significantly higher vine length at final harvest (4.74 m) compared to other cultivars. It was revealed from the study that ‘RS 03602833’ was the earliest in first flowering (25.00 days) as well as in picking (35.00 days) attributable to shortest internodal length (5.25 cm) irrespective of the appearance of first pistillate flower at 7.93th node amongst cultivars. However, ‘Multistar’ produced highest number of fruits per vine (33.47) with at par values in ‘Kian’ and ‘Valleystar’, whereas ‘JSCU 01’ expressed significantly highest fruit weight of 198.76 g. ‘Valleystar’ yielded maximum per vine (4.25 kg) and was highly enriched with total soluble solids. However, ‘Oscar’ recorded highest fruit yield of 12.29 t per 1000 m2 producing 27.20 number of fruits per vine and possessing 155.59 g average fruit weight, which was at par with ‘RS 03602833’, ‘Kian’, ‘KUK 9’, ’52–23 ’, ‘Valleystar’ and ‘Multistar’. ‘JSCU 01’ surpassed all other cultivars for sensory parameters like flavour, colour and texture as perceived by heterogeneous panel of evaluators, which was well supported by instrumental measurement of fruit firmness (3.91 kg/cm2) in this cultivar. The economic analysis also identified high yielding cultivar ‘Oscar’ as most remunerative cultivar exhibiting BCR of 0.68 with net realization of Rs. 51684 in shorter span of 90–100 days, which was immediately followed by ‘KUK 9’, ‘RS 03602833’ and ‘Kian’. Top Keywords Greenhouse cucumbers, evaluation, horticultural traits, economics. Top |