Vol. 6, Issue 1, Part B (2024)

This study assessed the effect of fertilizer type on the growth and yield of Cucurbita moschata Duch Ecotypes from six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Two fruit types (rough and smooth) were sourced from six geopolitical zones in Nigeria- Delta, Nsukka, Makurdi, Ogun, Osun, Kaduna and Taraba State, making a total of (10 collections). The experiment carried out in Teaching and Research Farm, Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with 5 replicates. A total of 150 accessions were evaluated for their performances under the three types of treatment (10 g of cow dung, 10 g of NPK 20:10:10 and control). Reproductive characters were subjected to Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), cluster and correlation Analysis using Mini Tab 17.0 software. The ANOVA revealed that replication had no significant effect on reproductive characters evaluated (p>0.05). On the other hand, accession, fertilizer type and interaction of accession and fertilizer type had significant effect on reproductive characters evaluated. There were significant differences among the accessions. There were also significant differences among the different fertilizer types applied except in stem diameter (0.02). Accession and fertilizer interaction effect showed significant effect on the reproductive characters evaluated except in number of flower per florescence (0.04). Mean performance of accessions, showed that Taraba smooth had the highest number of seeds per plant (302.27) and also gave the tallest plant (397.64 cm). On the other hand, Makurdi smooth gave the highest number of pods per plant (3.53). Mean performance of accessions due to effect of fertilizer type showed that accessions with organic fertilizer had the tallest plant (421.62 cm), highest number of pods per plant (3.33), and highest number of seeds per plant (304.23). Accessions with inorganic fertilizer on the other hand, had the highest number of seeds (65.98) and also the highest pod weight (2.83 kg). Mean performance of accessions based on accession and fertilizer interaction revealed that Makurdi Rough (MR) organic had the tallest plant (507.12 cm), and also had the highest number of pods per plant (5.0). Taraba Smooth (TS) inorganic on the other hand, had the highest pod weight (4.32 kg), and also gave the highest number of seeds pre plant (369.40). Correlation analysis revealed that plant length (PL) and leaf length (LL) were strongly correlated (r=0.737). Pod weight per plant (POWT) and number of seeds per plant showed moderate correlation. Plant length (PL) and number of pods per plant were weakly correlated. Cluster analysis showed that Makurdi Rough (MR), Delta Rough (DR), and Nsukka Rough (NR), were more closely related than the rest of the accessions, while Taraba Smooth (TS), and Ogun Smooth (OS) are the most divergent accessions. The results from this study have provided useful information especially on the crop’s agronomy, breeding, ecology and conservation of its genetic resources.