Articles
INFLUENCE OF VARYING NIGHT TEMPERATURES ON A CUCUMBER CROP
Since cucumber in The Netherlands is grown under high night temperatures (16 – 20°C) experiments were set up to investigate temperature influences on this crop.
Constant and varying temperatures were tried out.
A cucumber winter crop, 4 planting dates December/January, was grown under different night temperatures: 12°C, 16°C, 20°C, 5 or 10 hours 20°C the rest of the night 12°C. Day temperatures were the same in all treatments.
Climate control, -recording and data analysis were performed by means of a process computer.
Earliness, in days from planting till first yield, of the crop was strongly affected by planting date and night temperature.
The earliness of the varying night temperatures decreased for the December plantings with 3 days.
This implies that by varying the night temperatures an earlier production can be obtained by the same amount of energy.
No temperature influence on the rate of production could be recognized in this experiment.
It seems worthwhile to continue exploration in this field in future.