GROWTH, YIELD AND QUALITY OF CUCUMBER AS INFLUENCED BY FERTIGATION AND FOLIAR APPLICATION OF BORON

The experiment was conducted to study the effect of fertigation and foliar application of boron on growth, yield and quality of cucumber Cv.Himangi during two consecutive years 2018-19 and 2019-20.The experiment was consisting of fifteen treatment combinations of recommended doses of watersoluble fertilizers, comprising of five levels of fertigation viz. 100 % RDF through soil, 120 % RDF, 100 % RDF, 80 % RDF and 60 % RDF through fertigation in ten equal splits at 10 days interval starting from 8 days after sprouting of seeds along with three levels of boron through boric acid viz.0.0, 0.1, 0.2 per cent concentration.The spraying was undertaken at 30, 45 and 60 DAS to cucumber crop Cv. 'Himangi'.The results indicated that, most of the traits under study were significantly influenced by various fertigation and boron levels.On the basis of pooled data, it has been observed that, among various treatment combinations, maximum vine length (235.68 cm), minimum days required for first female flower appearance (38.13 days) minimum male :female ratio (4.16) and maximum number of pickings (9.40), yield per vine (2.44 kg) yield (228.37 q/ha), maximum chlorophyll content (47.05 mg/g), fruit diameter (5.25 cm) and fruit length (16.30cm) were obtained with the 120 % RDF through fertigation along with foliar application of boron at the concentration of 0.2 per cent.The vegetative growth, yield and quality parameters of cucumber were numerically higher when fertigated with 100 % RDF through fertigation along with foliar application of 0.2 % boron.