Floral Behavior and Response to Plant Growth Regulators of Some Selected Cucurbitaceous Vegetables

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the floral behavior and response to plant growth regulators of some selected cucurbitaceous vegetables at the Germplasm Centre of Agrotechnology Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna during March 2016 to August 2016. The study included two separate experiments where the experiment-I was conducted to observe the floral behavior of eight cucurbitaceous vegetables namely sponge gourd, sweet gourd, cucumber, bottle gourd, snake gourd, wax gourd, ribbed gourd and bitter gourd. The experiment-II consisted of two factors, viz. four concentrations of plant growth regulators (4-CPA) as control, 100 ppm, 200 ppm and 300 ppm and the other factor was five cucurbitaceous vegetables namely sponge gourd, sweet gourd, bottle gourd, bitter gourd and ribbed gourd. Most of the cucurbitaceous vegetables showed flower opening in the morning (4.00 a.m.–8.00 a.m.), except ribbed gourd (opened in the afternoon, 4.00 p.m.–6.00 p.m.) and snake gourd (opened at night, 7.00 p.m.–8.00 p.m.). The duration of anthesis of male flower was the highest in bitter gourd (100–110 min) and the lowest in sweet gourd (10–20 min). The longest duration of anthesis in female flower was shown by snake gourd (60–120 min) and the lowest by sweet gourd (20–25 min). The maximum number of flower per plant (100.8), number of male flower (53.33), number of female flower (53.00) and number of fruit per plant (32.22) were found in ribbed gourd. The maximum weight of fruit per plant (14.22 kg) and yield were recorded from bottle gourd (5.689 t/ha). The maximum ratio of male/female flower (1.21) was found in snake gourd and the minimum in bitter gourd (0.74). The 300 ppm 4-CPA showed better performance for maximizing the number of male flower (34.09), number of female flower (36.27), number of fruit per plant (23.93), average length of fruit (20.53 cm), average breadth of fruit (5.73 cm), weight of fruit per plant (12.87 kg) and yield (5.15 t/ha) of cucurbitaceous vegetables under study.