Impact of Vine Management on Yield and Quality Parameters of Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata)

The present study was conducted at the Instructional cum Research Farm, Department of Horticulture, Biswanath College of Agriculture, Assam Agricultural University, Biswanath Chariali with an aim to study the effect of vine management on yield, yield attributing factors and quality parameters (which included nutritional factors such as vitamin A, vitamin C) of pumpkin. The treatments were: T1 (Trimming of growing tip of the primary vine at 8th node stage), T2 (Trimming of growing tip of the primary vine at 10th node stage), T3 (Trimming of growing tip of the primary vine at 12th node stage), T4(Trimming of growing tip of the secondary vine at 6th node stage), T5(Trimming of growing tip of the secondary vine at 8th node stage), T6 (Removal of all tertiary vines), T7 (Retention of two tertiary vines) and T8(control without pruning). T3 further recorded the minimum days to appearance of first male (49.17 days), female (58.15 days) flowers, fruit set to harvest duration (51.43 days) and crop duration (110.55 days) while T8 recorded the maximum days. Significant variation was observed in the yield parameters where T3 recorded the maximum number of fruits (6.27),fruit weight (2.47 kg), fruit yield per plant (15.47 kg) and yield per hectare (27.88 t/ha). Fruit characters such as fruit length, fruit diameter and number of seeds revealed no significant differences among the different treatments but with respect to quality parameters pruning revealed significant differences in terms of vitamin A and ascorbic acid content. The experiment thus concluded that the treatment T3 (Trimming of growing tip of the primary vine at 12th node stage) produced the highest yield with higher B: C ratio of 2.52 and it can be recommended to the farmers of Assam in order to maximize the production and productivity of pumpkin.