Growth Analysis of Pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.) Under Various Management Practices and Temperature Regimes

Pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.) is an economically important plant and is cultivated throughout the world for oil and medicinal purposes. Optimum management practices to improve the growth and production of this forgotten crop require detailed growth data and analysis. This study was conducted to investigate the impacts of different management practices (including sowing date, plant density and nitrogen application) and temperature regimes on growth parameters of pumpkin, including shoot dry weight (DW), radiation use efficiency (RUE) and intercepted PAR (PARi). The required data of pumpkin were collected from a four-year experiment (2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014) which performed at research farm of Ferdowsi university of Mashhad, Iran. Results showed that sowing date between 1-11 May, plant density of 2.5 plants m-2 and nitrogen rate of 250kgha-1 resulted in highest possible yield of pumpkin. Increasing of both radiation use efficiency and intercepted PAR increased the pumpkin dry weight. Temperature stress induced by delaying sowing date resulted in lower pumpkin growth, however negative impact of temperature stress can be alleviated through selecting the optimum sowing date. Different temperature regimes during various phases of pumpkin growth cycle also led to the intra and inter annual variation of pumpkin dry weight among different sowing dates and years. Under optimum nitrogen rate, pumpkin showed improved resistance to higher air temperature. The study revealed the role of optimum nitrogen rate on decreasing impacts of temperature stress on crop growth.

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