Abstract:
An experiment was conducted during March to
July in 2017 (off season) at the Faculty of Agriculture,
University of Jaffna, Ariviyal Nagar, Kilinochchi to study the
effects of different shade levels on growth and yield
performances of cauliflower. Different shade levels such as
25 % (open field), 50 % (single net house) and 75 % (double
net house) were used as treatments. The experiment was
conducted in completely randomized design (CRD) with four
replications. Parametric (growth & yield) analysis were
done by using SAS 9.1 package. The influence of
environmental variables such as temperature, relative
humidity and light intensity were also studied.The result
revealed that growing of cauliflower in different shade levels
showed great influence on plant growth and yield attributes.
There were significant variations in number of leaves, plant
height,curd weight, curd diameter and curd circumference of
cauliflower under different light intensities. Light intensity in
the shade net house was lower than in the open field. The
highest vegetative growth and yield were observed in
cauliflower which was grown in 50 % shade levels and the
lowest yield was in 25 % shade level (open field). It can be
concluded that cauliflower can be cultivated in 50 % shade
levels successfully to produce quality curd during off season
of the dry zone of Sri Lanka.
