UTILIZING OF DIFFERENT CUCURBIT ROOTSTOCKS AS A SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE TO ENHANCE GROWTH, PRODUCTIVITY AND FRUIT QUALITY OF CUCUMBER

Grafting is an effective and environmentally friendly method for combating the negative impacts of biotic and abiotic stressful conditions and increasing the productivity of vegetable crops. Our experiment was conducted for two seasons in net greenhouse during summer seasons of 2020and 2021 at Vegetable Crops Department Farm, Faculty of Agriculture,CairoUniversity, Egypt.In our study, we investigated the effect of grafting cucumber onto eight rootstocks, which belong to four different species of cucurbits on plant growth, productivity and fruit quality characters. The experiment was performed using a randomized complete block design.The rootstocks included three accessions of squash (PEP 1635, PEP 1636 and PEP 1666),two accessions of pumpkin (PI526246 and PI599586), two accessions of bottle gourd (PI491347 and PI534556) and local cultivar of Luffaand compered with non-grafted cucumber (Hesham F₁). The performance of grafted cucumber scions varied according to the used rootstocks. Grafting process was applied by slant cut method which commercially used in cucurbits grafting, the highest survival rate was found for grafting onto bottle gourd rootstock PI491347in both seasons (67.9% and 69.23%, respectively) while the lowest survival rate value was observed for grafting on squash rootstock PEP1636 in both seasons (37.5% and 31.21%, respectively). Comparing with performance of non-grafted plants, grafting on squash rootstocks PEP 1635, PEP 1636 and PEP 1661 and pumpkin rootstock PI599586 caused a significant enhancement in all most plant growth parameter (plant length, leaf area, internode length and SPAD value), fruit quality (average fruit weight, fruit length and fruit diameter), early and total fruit yield. Pumpkin rootstocks significantly decreased Leaf diffusion resistance and increased Transpiration ratio. Pumpkin PI599586 increased the macro elements (N, P, K, Ca, Mg) in scion leaves.Grafting hybrid cucumber (Hesham F₁) on squash rootstocks (PEP1635 and PEP1666) caused a significant enhancement in total yield/m²