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ABSTRACT

According to the national horticultural board (NHB) the average production of the Bottle gourd in year 2017-18 was highest in Bihar with 649.69 tons and second was Uttar Pradesh with production 427.81 tons. In India, Bottle gourd cultivation has occupied an area of 1.58 million hectares with a production of 2.6 million hectares, which can be reduced relatively when practiced or grown on the rooftop of the house which can be commonly seen in the villages of Bihar and UP. Kaccha Ghar (Earthen home) roof top have large surface area as compared to the permanent structured home rooftop, due to the inclined rooftop floors. Hence this structure (khapda ka ghar and karkat houses) is highly suitable for this type of practice. This technique is even suitable for the low height and 1 floor houses. The rural villages of Bihar and UP can be advised to extensively adopt this technique as this can increase the livelihood of the small farmer and even land-less farmers. It is advised that 2-3 plants can be grown at pull to rooftop location but in farm and land sowing the seed rate is 3 to 6kg/ha.

India produces 11.2 per cent of global vegetable production among which the major crops are potato, tomato, onion, brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower, peas okra and bottle gourd(The Hindu-business line, 20 January 2020).West Bengal has overtaken Uttar Pradesh and emerged as the top vegetable producing state in 2018-19, as per the data presented in a recent horticultural meeting In a conference organized by Agriculture Ministry in Jan 2020 had released a State-wise horticulture production data which shows that West Bengal produced 29.55 million tonnes (mt.) of vegetables last year against 27.70 mt in the year before. Vegetable production in UP, which was on top position earlier, came down to 27.71 mt in 2018-19 from 28.32 mt the previous year.

The origin of Bottle gourd lagenaria siceraria (Molina Standl) is of tropical Africa and now being cultivated in warm and humid climates around the world for its various uses like vegetable, ornamental and useful hard-shelled fruit. In Northern India it is widely being grown during spring-summer and rainy season. Its name ‘bottle gourd’ was originated due to its shape like bottle and its use as a container in the past history. This fruit is used as vegetables in its green stage with leaves and stem. Tribal community across the globe uses its hard shells as utensils and for preparation of some musical instrument. Its pulp is known as a good source of fibre free carbohydrates. It is even used for preparation of sweets and pickles when it is at tender stage. In the tribal and remote villages it was seen that hard shells of mature fruits are used as water jugs, domestic utensils, floats for fishing nets, etc. Many health Dietician and doctors recommend this vegetable for old age people as it is easily digestible. It has cooling effect and has diuretic and cardiotonic properties. Its pulp is even used as an antidote production against certain poisons and it is well known for controlling constipation, night blindness and cough. Decoction made of its leaf is taken for curing jaundice and widely being used villages.

In case of dropsy its seeds were used as a medicine. It is the modest source of nutrients (Sheshadri, 1986) and still it is popular only among a large section of populations across globe. It was heard that in villages its leaf juice was used for curing children diarrhea. Decoction of its leaf along with sugar is used for jaundice treatment in India. Its seed oil application is common for relieving headache.

 Accurate spacing and nitrogen application has enhanced the yield of bottle gourd (Shukla and Prabhakar, 1987; Jadhav et al., 1996 and Patil et al., 1996). In past two decades progress has been made in the development of high yielding varieties and hybrids varieties. The assessment of input like spacing and fertilizers for newly developed bottle gourd varieties is very important. According to the national horticultural board (NHB) the average production of the Bottle gourd in year 2017-18 was highest in Bihar with 649.69 tons and second was Uttar Pradesh with production 427.81 tons. In India, Bottle gourd cultivation has occupied an area of 1.58 million hectares with a production of 2.6 million hectares (Anonymous, 2017-2018) which can be reduced relatively when practised or grown on the rooftop of the house which can be commonly seen in the villages of Bihar and UP.

Bottle gourd is a climbing crop with duration of 2 to 4 months. Its physiology is  leaf are dark green till it is dry due to age off, flowers are solitary and chalky white in colour and its fruits are varying shape and size depends upon varieties.

 

 Climate and Soil

Favourable climate for its cultivation is hot and moist as it is a typical warm season vegetable. The Optimum night and day temperature for its proper growth and high fruit set is 18- 22°C and 30-35 °C respectively, as it cannot with stand frost which can reduce its growth and yield. It was seen that Sandy loam soil is most suitable for its cultivation (Bihar and Uttar Pradesh max area soil texture found is Sandy loam). It is suggested that the soil should be rich in organic matter with good drainage. A well drained fertile silt loam soil was seen ideal for cultivation of bottle gourd. This crop is highly suitable for river bed cultivation because it has deep tap root system. For rooftop cultivation method a deep soil supports vines for a long period and where water availability is sufficient and here it is grown throughout the year.

 Sowing

For rooftop method a best suited location should be chosen were watering and fertilizer application would be easy. It should be noted that the location of its planting would be easy enough to pull it to climb through a rope on the roof top. After incorporating farmyard manure, seeds can be sown at a distance of 2.0-3.5 m between plants. In a farm and land sowing which is sloppy is done in pits with 2-3 plants / pit. Better germination can be seen if the seeds were soaked for 12-24 hours in water or in succinic acid (600 ppm). There is no recommended seed rate for rooftop method as it is advised that 2-3 plants can be grown at pull to rooftop location but in farm and land sowing the seed rate is 3 to 6kg/ha . The seed were sown from January to February for summer crops and June to July for rainy season crops. In hills seeds were sown in April.

 Manure and Fertilizer

Add FYM manure @ 10-15 t/ha at the time of seed sowing and PK @100:60:60 kg/ ha should be applied after its germination. And for land and farm grown, apply 10 kg of FYM (20 t/ha) 100 g of NPK 6:12:12 mixture as basal and 10 g of N per pit 30 days after sowing.

 Training and pruning

Bottle gourd has good vegetative growth so a proper training and pruning are advantageous. Training plants to bower helps to tap sunlight more effectively and yield as high as 80 t/ha was obtained. Auxiliary buds of growing vines were advised to be removed till vines attain bower height. When vine reaches bower, removed of apical bud is 10-15 cm below bower to let 2 or 3 branches to extend on bower. After creation of 4-5 fruits, vines are once more pruned allowing 2-3 auxiliary buds only to grow on primary vines.

 Irrigation

This should be considered as plant in the kitchen garden and should be irrigated at every second day (10 litres) with light water pouring. The summer crop requires regular irrigation at 4-5 days of interval. In the rainy season crop No irrigation is require.

 Harvesting and Yield

Bottle gourd harvesting can be started at 35 - 55 day after sowing depending upon variety. It was suggested that it should be harvested when the rind of the fruit is very tender and green. There should be no delay in harvesting as it causes the fruit to become unfit for marketing. Average yield which can be attained is between 0.25 to 0.45 kg / ft² floor area. After 10-12 days of anthesis fruits attain edible maturity and can be observed by pressing on fruit skin and noting pubescence persisting on skin. Seeds are soft during its edible maturity but it becomes hard and flesh coarse on aging and drying. Cylindrical shape at tinder stage is generally market demanding. Harvesting can be done at 3-4 days intervals. While harvesting, care should be taken to avoid injury to fruits as well as to vines. Plucking of fruits at the time of harvesting should be done with sharp knives by keeping a small part of fruit stalk along with fruit to avoid its damage. Average yield of open pollinated varieties is 20-25 t/ha and for F1 hybrids varieties it is 40-50 t/ha. Under cool and moist condition this fruits can be stored for 3-5 days and for export purpose it can be packed in polythene bags and bags may be kept in boxes of 50-100 kg add capacity. In case of rooftop farming the significantly highest fruit yield of 150 to 250 q/h can be obtained at sowing distance of 1 metre or higher spacing with highest net returns of Rs.50,000/ha to 80,000/ha. But for farm produce (Mukesh and Kuldeep, july 2018) it can be highest as 378.0 q/h can be obtained at 60cm spacing with net returns of Rs.1, 27, 227/ha.

 Recommended improved verities

Pusa aveen, Pusa Hybrid-3 and Pusa Meghdoot are the recommended varieties for this region which has cylindrical bright green, 40-45 cm long fruits weighing 600-750 g. Recommended F1 hybrids verities area, Pusa Meghdoot, Pusa Manjari, Pusa Hybrid 3 and Pant Sankar Lauki 1 were developed in public sector in bottle gourd.

 According to the National Horticulture Board the data statics given for the bottle gourd production in India as below the table 1:

Table1. Sate wise Bottle gourd Production in 2017-18 year

Sr No.	State	Production (000 Tonnes)
1	Bihar	649.69
2	Uttar Pradesh	427.81
3	Haryana	364.69
4	Madhya Pradesh	349.39
5	Chhattisgarh	252.27
6	Orissa	138.5
7	Punjab	135.64
8	Assam	51.56
9	Andhra Pradesh	50.94
10	Telangana	41.35
11	Tripura	39.44
12	Maharashtra	35.84
13	Jammu & Kashmir	29.64
14	Rajasthan	23.83
15	Tamil Nadu	16.02
16	Jharkhand	15.43
17	Karnataka	15.3
18	Kerala	13.52
19	Meghalaya	9.36
20	Sikkim	8.62
21	Nagaland	0.2
Total		2,669.04

Source: National Horticulture Board (NHB)

 Conclusion

Kaccha Ghar (Earthen home) roof top have large surface area as compared to the permanent structured home rooftop, due to the inclined rooftop floors. Hence this structure (khapda ka ghar and karkat houses) is highly suitable for this type of practice. This technique is even suitable for the low height and 1 floor houses. The rural villages of Bihar and UP can be advised to extensively adopt this technique as this can increase the livelihood of the small farmer and even land fewer farmers.

 References

Anonymous (2017). Area and production of Bottle Gourd in India. Department of Horticulture, Haryana.

Anonymous (2017). Area and production of Bottle Gourd in India. Department Of Agriculture Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Government of India.

E-Paper, The Hindu/The Business Line (Published, 20 January2020).https://www.thehindubusinessline.com / economy / agri – business / west-Bengal –emerges - at - the - top - in – vegetable production / article 30609191

Jadhav, V.T., Patil, S.S.D. and Pawar, V.S. (1996). Response of bottle gourd to irrigation and nitrogen levels. Journal of Maharashtra Agricultural University. 21 (1): 131-132.

Mukesh Kumar and Kuldeep Kumar (2018), Economic Analysis of Hybrid and Conventional Varieties of Bottle Gourd as Affected by Different Levels of Nitrogen and Plant Spacing, International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706,7 (08).

Patil, S.R., Desai, U.T., Pawer, B.G. and Patil, B.T. (1996). Effect of NPK does on growth and yield of bottle gourd cv. Samrat. Journal of Maharashtra Agricultural University.21 (1), 65-67.

Sheshadri, V.S. (1986). Cucurbits, In, Vegetable Crops in India. T.K. Bose and M.G. Som (Ed), Naya Prokash, Calcutta, pp. 92.

Shukla, V. and Prabhakar, B.S. (1987). Effect of plant spacing and fertilizer on yield of bottle gourd. South Indian Horticulture. 35 (6), 453-454.

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Rooftop bottle gourd farming for additional income of the small farmers in Bihar.pdf