Efficacy of pinching and plant growth regulators in enhancing yield characters of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.)

Abstract

Cucumber is a portentous cucurbitaceous vegetable, valued for its nutritive cum medicinal properties. Its production potential relies upon numerous factors, and can easily be augmented by manipulating them, therefore a field experiment was conducted with the objective of evaluating the effect of pinching and PGRs on yield characters of cucumber cv. Gujarat Cucumber-1 using various pinching and PGRs treatments. The experiment was arranged over 15 treatment combinations comprising of 3 levels of pinching (P0: no pinching, P1: pinching at 4th node and P2: pinching at 6th node) and 5 levels of PGRs (G0: control, G1: CCC @ 200 ppm, G2: CCC @ 400 ppm, G3: ethrel @ 300 ppm and G4: ethrel @ 600 ppm) laid out in a Randomized Block Design (Factorial concept) with three replications. The pinching treatment and the PGRs application individually significantly influenced the yield parameters such as the average length of fruit, number of fruits per vine, yield per vine and yield per hectare, but both failed to manifest any evident effect on the average fruit weight. Pinching at 6th node and higher doses of both ethrel and CCC had significantly enhanced most of the yield characters. The interaction effect of pinching and PGRs failed to exhibit any significant effect for all the characters studied.