The Impact of Different Types of Soilless Media on Some Significant Biological Parameters of Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.)

ABSTRACT:

The cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is amongst the mostvital crop species from the Cucurbitaceae family, originating within the Bay of Bengal and the Himalayas. Most of the cucumber varieties are cultivated in the tropics, subtropics and milder portions of the temperate zones of both hemispheres. The present research was carried out in the unheated greenhouse in the Department of Horticulture, PMAS-AAUR. The following growth media, Border soil as a control (2) Soil + sand (75:25), Soil + Peat (75:25) and Sand + Peat (50:50) were used in this study. Following physical and chemical parameters were studied during the experiment, i.e. plant height, stem thickness, area of leaf area and number of leaves per plant, length of individual fruit, diameter of individual fruit, fruit firmness, number of fruit/plant, weight of individual fruit, yield, leaf chlorophyll contents, pH of fruit juice and total soluble solids (TSS). The trial was conducted with a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with four treatments, and each treatment was replicated thrice. The analysis of variance technique was used to analyze the data, and the mean differences of the various parameters were compared by the least significant difference test at 5% probability level. It is concluded that different growing soil mixes have shown effective responses to the growth, yield and quality of horticultural crops, especially cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.).