Vol. 12, Special Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Shrimant D Rathod and Almash H Shaikh

Abstract:
There is need to increase nutritionally rich vegetable production and productivity of seasonal and non-season crops in our country. Productivity of vegetable crops can be increased by 3 to 5 times in protected cultivation as compared to open environment. Considering the importance of timely application of fertilizers and irrigation in protected cultivation the research project entitled "Response of cucumber to different irrigation and fertigation levels in summer season under polyhouse conditions" was conducted to know the optimum irrigation, fertigation requirement of parthenocarpic cucumber at the Research-cum-Demonstration Farm of Precision Farming Development Centre, Department of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, Dr. Annasaheb Shinde College of Agril. Engg. & Tech., MPKV, Rahuri (M.S.) during the period from March 2021 to July 2021. This experiment involved growing of cucumber in a polyhouse condition with three irrigation regimes (100, 80, and 60% of evapo-transpiration of crop i.e. Etc.) and three fertigation regimes (150, 125 and 100% of recommended dose of fertilizer i.e. RDF) treatments.The experiment was carried out in factorial randomized block design with three replications. The RDF for cucumber in open field was 100:50:50 NPK Kg ha^-1 and 20 t ha^-1 farm yard manure. The crop was irrigated daily and fertigated twice in a week with 27 equal splits as per treatments. The area under experiment was 336.00 m². ENZA ZADEN Fadia best quality parthenocarpic, beit alpha hybrid cucumber seeds were selected for protected cultivation. The results revealed that drip irrigation scheduled daily with 100% ETc. recorded highest cucumber yield (117.46 q/1008 m²) and fertigation @ 150% RDF twice in a week with 27 equal splits recorded maximum cucumber yield (122.48 q/1008 m²) under polyhouse condition. It is concluded that the irrigation scheduled daily with drip @ 100% ET_cand fertigated @ 150% RDF twice in a week with 27 equal splits resulted maximum B:C ratio of 3.46 and net monetary returns of Rs. 399568/1008 m² from cucumber grown in summer season under polyhouse condition.