Influence of Planting Time on Yield and Quality of Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) Varieties

The present investigation was conducted during rabi season of 2020 at Experimental Farm of Vegetable Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, DAV University, Jalandhar to study the effect of different dates of sowing viz., 9 October, 24 October and 8 November and three cultivars, Supriya, All Green, Punjab Green on growth, yield and quality of spinach. The experiment was conducted in a Factorial Randomized Block Design with three replications. Observations were recorded on days to emergence, days to complete germination, plant height (cm), number of leaves per plant, leaf area (cm2), fresh yield per plot, total fresh yield per hectare, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, days to 50% bolting, number of branches, days to harvesting, seed yield per plot and yield per hectare. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant differences among date of sowings, cultivars and interaction effect of dates of sowing and cultivars for all characters under study. It was observed that plants sown on 9 October resulted in superior performance for most of the traits studied. Among cultivars, desirable results were observed in All Green. Considering the interaction of date of sowing and cultivars it was concluded that All Green sown on 9 October can result in superior performance with respect to growth, yield and quality parameters of spinach.