Evolving nursery production technology for summer vegetables under foggy conditions

To grow summer vegetables successfully, the vigorous and healthy nursery is required to be raised under severe winter months. The plains experience fog in December and January, which induces chilling injury to tender plants in nursery. Hence, different techniques were tried to grow the nursery under foggy conditions. The experiment was replicated thrice over years to get the reproducible results. The longest germination duration has been observed in capsicum hence chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) cv. DKC-8 was taken as testing seed. The experiments were conducted on 29^th December every year, keeping in view the over casting of fog. The field germination of seed was uniform around 85.00 ± 1.0%. But significant differences were found in days to emergence. Sunken bed (3 m x 1 m x 0.45 m deep) covered with white/transparent polythene took 11 days to emergence in non foggy year of 2008–09, while in foggy years of 200910 and 2010–11, the seed emerged in 20 days. The emergence in sunken bed could be advanced by 36.33 days as compared to control (53.33 days) i.e. raised bed covered with grass. Lanky and etiolated seedlings were produced under black polythene thatched over sunken or raised beds. The seedling emergence process was also enhanced under white poly tunnels (23.33 days) and naturally ventilated poly house (27 days). The seedling attained four leaf stage in 36.33 days under sunken beds covered with white polythene by producing vigorous seedlings (SV-1, valued at 755.83). Damping off disease was observed in control only.