Enhancing crop productivity is essential for increasing farmer incomes, and application of ethephon along with proper pruning practices could provide effective approaches for improving yield of cucurbit crops. A field experiment was conducted to study the effect of ethephon and pruning practices on sex expression and yield of cucumber cv long green at Rupandehi, Nepal from April to July 2022. The experiment used a two-factor factorial RCBD, with 2 doses of ethephon (300 ppm & control spray) as one factor and pruning practices (3G, 2G & no pruning) as the other, resulting six treatments which were replicated four times. Morphological and phenological parameters such as plant height, days to flowering, number of male and female flowers per plant, M: F ratio, fruit length, fruit weight, fruit number per plant, and yield were recorded. It was observed that ethephon @ 300 ppm produced the highest yield (65.59 t/ha) with increased fruits per plant (13.19) and individual fruit weight (497.31 g). Highest fruit yield (66.97 t/ha), fruit number (13.47 per plant), and individual fruit weight (497.20 g) was observed with 3G pruning. Ethephon @ 300 ppm delayed male flowers, but female flowers were observed significantly earlier (34.21 DAT), with a similar effect observed in 3G pruning. Both ethephon @ 300 ppm (39.89) and 3G pruning (41.99) significantly increased the total number of female flowers in comparison with other treatments. Control spray of ethephon resulted in highest fruit length and application of ethephon @ 300 ppm resulted to highest fruit width. Pruning did not significantly influence fruit length but increased fruit width. The study revealed that a spray of 300 ppm ethephon and 3G pruning can enhance femaleness and productivity of cucumber.

In this study, rooting performance of cuttings of local olive types of Northern Cyprus taken in spring and autumn seasons was investigated. Gemlik Olive cultivar was used as the control group and 14 different local olive types constituted the experimental groups. Green cuttings taken from local olive types were initially treated with 4000 ppm indole-3-butyric (IBA) and they were then rooted in perlite medium under fogging unit in a plastic greenhouse. Following 100-days of rooting, rooting ratios, root lengths, number of roots and shooting ratios were determined. As expected, the best rooting ratio was obtained from Gemlik Olive cultivar (control group). Among the local types, the best rooting ratio (58.67%) was obtained from Çamlıköy with Type 8 olive type and the best rooting performance (45.87%) was achieved in cuttings rooted in autumn season.