Standardization of irrigation requirement of salad cucumber in polyhouse

Abstract

Present project was to standardize the irrigation requirement of salad cucumber grown in polyhouse and to find the suitable packaging for extending the shelf life of salad cucumber. The experiment had five irrigation treatments with six replications. Two types of irrigation- basin and drip were practiced. The plot having basin irrigation with 2.5 l/plant/day was taken as the control plot. The crop inside the polyhouse with drip irrigation of 1.5 l/plant/day performed well during the experiment with a water use efficiency of 121. Drip irrigation in comparison with the surface irrigation has given higher yield throughout the crop period. Drip irrigation has shown larger soil moisture content a day after irrigation, while the conventional surface irrigation had least soil moisture content. The experiment reveals that the soil temperature inside the polyhouse has a direct relation with rainfall, since the temperatures show maximum value at minimum rainfall, and vice versa. Since soil temperature plays an important role at the critical growth stages of salad cucumber, the rainfall has a great significance. Packaging is one of the most important processes to prevent quality deterioration of salad cucumber. In the experiment, the deep freezing of salad cucumber at 13 o C along with 10% perforated polythene packing was found to be effective for extending the shelf life up to 15 days.