Effect of Inter-cultivation and Physical Barriers on Growth, Yield and Disease occurrence in Zucchini (Cucurbita pepo L.)

The present investigation was performed to study the effect of inter-cultivation and physical barriers on growth, yield and disease occurrence in zucchini during January-March, 2022. The field trial was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications keeping the plot size 1.5 m x 1.5 m. During the experiment, observations for plant height, number of leaves, number of nodes, days to flower initiation (staminate and pistillate), total number of staminate and pistillate flowers, number of fruits per plant, weight of fruits, yield per hectare etc were recorded. The results revealed that the treatment T4 Zucchini + Aluminium foil (On the ridge) recorded maximum plant height (38.33 cm at 30 DAS, 49.75 cm at 45 DAS, 62.75 cm at 60 DAS), number of nodes (21.08), number of leaves per plant (19.58), minimum number of days to flower initiation (39.00 in case of staminate flowers and 44.83 in case of pistillate flowers), maximum number of staminate flowers (8.58) and pistillate flowers (13.00), maximum number of fruits per plant(5.33), maximum weight of fruits per plant (0.749 kg), maximum weight of fruits per plot (1.99 kg) and yield per hectare (7.49 t/ha-1 ).