Effect of soil and foliar application of boron with ethrel on growth and yield of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.)
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Date
2022-05-04
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Department of Plant Physiology, OUAT, Bhubaneswar
Abstract
The present investigation was carried out in two sets of experiment. At first, a net house study was done to identify a suitable cucumber variety to female flower induction by foliar application of ethrel @300 mg l-1 and secondly, to study further the chosen variety’s performance to ethrel and boron application on field experiment to improve the yield and yield attributes. The net house experiment was conducted in October, 2019 in the department of plant physiology, college of Agriculture, Bhubaneswar with completely randomized design (CRD) and replicated twice with twenty numbers of cucumber varieties. It was found that spray application of ethrel had improved vine length (133.50 cm), maximum number of leaves per plant (24.53), maximum leaves area (166.43 cm2), a greater number of primary nodes per plant (18), percentage of fruit set per plant (88.56), number of female flowers per plant (17.50), number of fruits per vine (15.50) and highest yield per vine (2.98 kg) in cultivar Rohan F1 than control (water spray) compared to other cultivars. The field experiment was conducted in two consecutive years in Central Farm of OUAT during 2020 and 2021 to observe the impact of ethrel and boron as soil and frequencies of foliar spray on cultivar Rohan F1 for its growth, yield and yield attributes. Cultivar Rohan F1 was used as planting material and was sown in rings of experimentally randomized block designed (RBD). Ethrel @300mg l-1 was applied twice to the crops at two true leaf stage with a gap of 7 days on all the treatments viz. T1- RDF (150-75-75):: N:P:K kg.ha-1 with zero boron (Control), T2- RDF+B @1.0 kg soil application, T3- RDF+ FS @ 0.25% borax once, T4- RDF+ FS@ 0.5% borax once, T5- RDF+ FS@ 0.75% borax once, T6- RDF+ FS @ 1.0% borax once, T7- RDF+ FS@ 0.25% borax twice, T8- RDF+ FS@ 0.5% borax twice, T9- RDF+ FS @ 0.75% borax twice, and T10- RDF+ FS @ 1.0% borax twice and B was also foliar sprayed twice at 30th and 37th days after sowing as per treatment need. We found that T8- RDF+ FS@ 0.5% borax twice was highest pooled performance in leaf area character with an increase of 47.11% and 18.44% compared to the control (T1) and soil application (T2), increase in number of nodes per plant up to 21.7% over control and 15.7% over soil application; vine length increased up to 30.68% and 14.21 %; Leaf area index increased to 40.93% and 17.54%; number of fruits per plant increased to 39.56% and 15.45%; yield per ha increased to 57.22 % and 40.92% in control and soil application respectively, where boron plays an important role in transporting carbohydrates and manufactured organic materials in the leaves and accelerating their transmission and accumulation in the fruits. Which leads to an increase in its weight, and the increase in the number of female flowers increases the yield of one plant (4.01 kg) and then an increase in the total yield (55.14-ton ha-1). Notably, T8 FS 0.5% twice resulted in increased flowering and fruit formation and tissue Fe, P, K, Mn, Mg, Ca, Zn and Mo contents, indicating B deficiency and its deficiency affects the translocation of sugar, starches, N, P and the synthesis of amino acids and proteins as recorded in control plant. We suggest that foliar
spray of boron has more advantageous than soil application as boron applied through foliage are absorbed right at the site where they are needed as quickly as possible and B can be transported from leaves to roots via phloem in this species. The translocation of foliar supplied B to the roots is affected by plant B status and the synthesis of photosynthetic assimilates.