Tropical and subtropical vegetables (2+1)

Harvesting and yield

Harvesting
Picking of fruits at the right edible maturity stage is dependent upon the varieties. In salad or slicing cucumber, dark-green skin colour should not turn into brownish yellow and white spine color will also be a useful indication for edible maturity. Optimum length of the fruit will be around 20-25cm at edible maturing stage, depending upon the cultivar in case of slicing cucumber. In small fruited types, which have pale green skin colour, the length of fruit should be around 8-12 cm. Here also fruits turning yellow will be over mature. In western countries, most of the pickling cultivars are adopted to machine or once over harvest.

Yield
About 15-20t/ha is obtained from open conditions by using monoecious variety. This yield could be doubled by using tropical gynoecious variety. Under green house conditions about 200 t/ha yield is obtained using tropical gynoecious hybrids.