Assessment of Growth Media Effect on Cucumber Performance and Economic Returns in a Greenhouse Environment

Abstract

This research was carried out in a greenhouse located at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) - Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Nyankpala, Northern Region of Ghana from June, 2022 to September, 2022. The study compared the growth of cucumber grown on soil with that grown on cocopeat and soil-biochar and the cost-benefit ratio of the treatments in a greenhouse. The treatments consisted of three irrigation regimes (100 % crop evapotranspiration requirement (ETc), 75 % ETc, and 50 % ETc) and growth media included Soil (So), Soil plus Charred rice husk biochar (So + CRH), and Cocopeat (CP). The study was a 3 x 3 factorial experiment in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Data was collected on media physico-chemical properties and growth parameters. Determination of the cost-benefit (CB) of the media was done by using the CBR formula. The result of the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed that CP and So + CRH supported optimum growth of cucumber under greenhouse conditions. Cucumber growth parameters, including plant height and flower count, were maximized on CP. The highest leaf area index was obtained from plants grown on So + CRH; chlorophyll content was highest for cucumber plants grown on So, while the highest flower abortion occurred on plants grown on So + CRH. Use of So proved to be more profitable compared to CP and So + CRH. This could be due to the high cost of production of CP and high flower abortion associated with So + CRH-grown plants, which reduced the yield. More work could be done on the combination of CP and CRH for greenhouse cucumber production.