Background: Cauliflower, one of the important commercial vegetable crops, grown in the plains and mid hills of Nepal, ranks first in terms of area and production among vegetables in Nepal. The majority of the farmers grow cauliflower in mid-season (September-December) because of favorable environmental conditions, low cost of production and higher yield than those in early and late seasons. During the mid-season, farmers use hybrid cultivars predominantly because of their relatively high yield. However, in terms of taste along with qualitative characteristics and production cost, open pollinated (OP) cultivars are far superior to hybrids. In addition, OP cultivars also serve as the organic farming avenues as well and there is a need to promote these OP cultivars.
Methods: An experiment was conducted in the horticulture farm of the Campus of Live Sciences located at Tulsipur, Dang, Nepal at an altitude of 750 m for two consecutive years (2021 and 2022 AD) to evaluate the growth and yield performance of different open pollinated cauliflower cultivars. Five open pollinated cauliflower cultivars viz. Kathmandu Local, Khumal Jyapu, Agheni, Terai-1 and Terai-2 were treated as treatments and were replicated four times in Randomized Complete Block Design.
Results: The experiment revealed that the cauliflower cultivar Khumal Jyapu and Agheni had consistently higher plant height, stem diameter, leaf number, leaf length, leaf breadth, fresh leaf weight, biological yield, economic yield, and harvest index.
Conclusion: Considering their economically important growth and yield attributes Khumal Jyapu and Agheni were found to be the suitable mid-season cultivars under Dang condition. Hence, Khumal Jyapu and Agheni could be promoted for cultivation in the agro climatic zones related to that of Tulsipur, Dang.
open pollinated, cauliflower varieties, mid-season cultivars, performance
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