This research is conducted on the effects of bottle gourd cultivation during the off-season by small and marginal farmers in the Deeh block of Raebareli district, Uttar Pradesh. In agriculture, trellis farming has become revolutionary, especially for creepers like Bottle gourd, Ridge gourd, Bitter gourd, etc. A total of 20 farmers were selected from five villages for the study in the FRDP (Focused Rural Development Programme) project area during the year 2022-2023. Each farmer cultivated bottle gourd on 0.5-acre area, with 10 farmers sowing seeds in the first week of February 2023 and the remaining 10 in the first week of May 2023.
This study shows bottle gourd farming using trellis during the off-season and on-season, focusing on input costs, yield, harvesting dates, Gross Return (Rs), Price per qt (Rs), Net Return (Rs) and B:C Ratio. On-season (February) bottle gourd cultivation performed better in terms of production and harvesting days than off-season cultivation, with negligible cost of cultivation differences. Off-season bottle gourd cultivation production is less (68.213) on 0.5 acres than on-season bottle gourd cultivation (79.130), and also on-season bottle gourd cultivation had higher harvesting days (87.03) and also significantly higher than off-season bottle gourd cultivation (70.00).
Economic features show notable variations that support off-season farming. Remarkably, for 0.5 acres, off-season cultivation yielded more net return (Rs 72700.80) with Rs. 2004.34 per qt. On the other hand, the net return from on-season cultivation was Rs 35944.60 with Rs.1231.65 per qt. These findings highlight the off-season bottle gourd cultivation's economic feasibility in trellis-based systems. However, May sowing fetches the best market price as the highest B:C ratio (2.11) was recorded for May sowing.
Sachin Kumar Singh, Manish Tiwari, Santosh Kumar Dixit, Purti Singh, VK Singh, Raviraj Jadhav. Off-season trellis-based vegetable cultivation can provide better source of income for small and marginal farmers. Int J Res Agron 2024;7(3):487-489. DOI: 10.33545/2618060X.2024.v7.i3g.458
