APPLICATION RESULTS OF CUCUMBER GRAFTING ON DIFFERENT ROOTSTOSKS OF PUMPKIN

At present it is very actual in vegetable growing the development of highly effective and ecologically safe methods for increasing yields and plant resistance to unfavorable growth conditions. One of these methods is grafting. The goal of the study was to learn the influence of the rootstock on the characteristics of the growth, development and yield of cucumber. Research was conducted in 2015-2016 in greenhouse in spring-summer period in Armenia. As a scions was used cucumber variety Nazrvan, which was grafted on 5 pumpkin rootstocks (VI033637, VI03338, VI03364, VI040903, VI056328) from the collection of the World Vegetable Center (WVC). The grafting was carried out according to the standard method. When the VI033637 rootstock was used, flowering started 5 days earlier than the ungrafted plants, while when grafted on VI040903, the fruits ripened 6.2 days earlier. High increase of early yield (33.3%) received when used both above mentioned rootstocks. VI033638 – 4.1 kg/m2 and VI033664- 9.9 kg/m2 samples provided high increase of the total yield. For all the types of rootstocks the grafted plants of cucumber surpass the non-grafted ones by height from 4.7 % to 21.7%, by marketability of fruits from 5% to 14% and by fruit mass from 15 gr to 45 g. At the beginning of fruit-setting of cucumber plants the number of female flowers increased from 27% to 63% depending on the rootstock sample. The amount of dry substances in all grafted plants has increased by 4.4-8.8% and the amount of vitamin C by 1.8-9.2%. As a result of research carried out by us, perspective rootstocks (VIO33638 and VIO33664) are identified by a set of economically valuable characteristics which are recommended for applying in the further investigation and breeding activities and in production of grafted plants.