Scheduling of irrigation for cucurbitaceous vegetables
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Date
1985
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Department of Agronomy, College of Horticulture, Vellanikkara
Abstract
An experiment was conducted at the Agricultural Research Station, Mannuthy during the summer season of 1983 – 84 to study the response of cucurbitaceous vegetables viz., pumpkin, oriental pickling melon and ashgourd to different moisture regimes. The experiment was laid out in randomised block design with four replications. The treatments consisted of five moisture regimes viz., unirrigated control, conventional method of irrigation @ 13 litres/day, irrigation at 25 per cent, 50 per cent and 75 per cent depletion of available soil moisture.
The study revealed that irrigation favourably influenced the crop growth and yield. However, there were no significant differences in total yield per plant and per hectare between the different levels of irrigation, for the three crops studied.
Treatments which received frequent irrigations showed higher values of consumptive use throughout the crop growth period. Crop coefficients were also higher in the frequently irrigated plots. Field water use efficiency did not vary significantly between the treatments. The drier regimes showed a higher crop water use efficiency than the wet regimes.
Moisture extraction was found to be high from the surface layer (0-15 cm) in all the treatments. Loss of moisture from the surface was greater in the case of the wet regimes. Moisture extraction decreased with depth. The dry regimes extracted more moisture from the deeper layers than the wet regimes.
The drier regimes indicated greater lateral spread of roots. The depth of penetration of roots did not vary markedly between the different treatments in pumpkin and ashgourd while in melon, the drier regimes showed a greater vertical spread of roots. The unirrigated plots showed the highest value of root-shoot ratio though the dry weight of roots was the least.
Among the different irrigation levels tried, 75 per cent depletion of available soil moisture was found to be the optimum permissible level of depletion for pumpkin, oriental pickling melon and ashgourd. This involves irrigation at 5-7 days interval. Can evaporimeters were found to be useful in scheduling irrigations. With can evaporimeters, irrigation to pumkin, oriental pickling melon and ashgourd may be given at cumulative can evaporation values of about 60-70 mm during the vegetative stages of growth followed by 45-55 mm during the flowering, fruit formation and fruit maturity stages.
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