Economic Evaluation of Technologies for Early Season Production of Bottle Gourd

This paper has worked out the economics of various treatments for early season production of bottle gourd by conducting experiment at the research farm of Department of Vegetable Science, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar during 2011–12. The experiment was conducted with five different dates of sowing and three different growing conditions: (i) direct seed sowing in open field under straw mulch (M₁), direct seed sowing under poly-tunnel (M₂) and transplanting of seedlings under poly-tunnel (M₃). The total cost and net returns per hectare for various treatments were calculated from the crop as per the recommended package. A difference in respect of production cost was observed for different growing conditions only, not for different sowing dates. However, there was a difference in net return per hectare for both growing conditions and sowing dates due to variations in early and total fruit yield. The cost was (‘ 89285/ha) under growing condition M₁, followed by growing condition M₂ (‘ 146804/ha) and M₃ (‘ 149804/ha). However, the highest net return of ‘ 308710/ha was obtained in planting on 15^th December with direct seed sowing under poly-tunnel method. The paper has also reported the benefit cost: ratio under different treatment combinations