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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
The field experiment was conducted on watermelon (Citrullus lanatus Thunb) cv. Kiran in summer season for two consecutive years viz., 2015 and 2016 at Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth, Parbhani. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of different mulches (black plastic mulch, transparent plastic mulch, soybean strawmulch and control)on root zone temperature, growth and fruit yield characters of watermelon under different irrigation levels. Among the mulches soil temperature in transparent and black plastic mulch applications were higher (2.5 – 5.3 0C and 2.2 – 3.0 0C respectively) than control. In case of soybean straw mulch, lower mean soil temperature was recorded on an average 0.6 0C (0.3 – 1.2 0C) than control during both the years of experimentation. Among all mulching treatments, black plastic mulch resulted higher number of branches per vine (10.05), main vine length (209.16 cm), vine diameter (8.27 mm) and number of leaves per vine (290.50). Yield of watermelon in black plastic mulch was 28.90 t/ha, which was higher as compare to other mulch and no mulch. There was found significant positive correlation between yield of watermelon and average root zone temperature (R2 = 0.708).