Bhoopendra Singh

Stevia is likely to become a major source of high potency sweetener for the growing natural food market in the future. Therefore, efficient and fast mechanized production needs to be established for Stevia to address the need. Understanding the biology of the Stevia plants and biochemistry of the sweet glycosides are prerequisites for conversion of Stevia to a modern crop. The demand for high potency sweeteners is expected to increase worldwide. It was only in the last year that Stevia really started to capture attention in the Indian market as a healthy alternative sweetener to sugar.

Results of the present investigation entitled "Effect of study on plant geometry, cultivar and fertilizer doses on growth, yield and quality of cucumber under protected condition" was carried out at vegetable Research Farm of the Department of Horticulture, SUATS, Prayagraj, Allahabad (U.P.) during the year 2017-18 and 2018-2019 in winter session. Showed significant variation in vegetative growth, flowering characteristics, fruit quality, yield and other related parameters experiment. Efforts have been made to discuss the significant findings of the experimental results on pooled basis in this chapter. Thus, on the basis of results, summarized above, it can be concluded that T18 (PPC-3 + 30:20:32 kg + 60 x 50 cm) was found significantly superior in respect of growth, flowering, yield and quality parameters. Most of the parameters and yield attributes also attained significantly greater values under higher plant population with spacing 60cm x 50cm were found to be appropriate spacing and fertilizer dose 30:20:32 level, respectively. The cucumber variety Pant Parthenocarpic-3 was produced highly productive as compared to rest of the treatments.