International Journal of Environment and Climate Change

The field experiment was conducted at Nursery Farm, Department of Environmental Sciences, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Prayagraj during the rabi season. The experiment was laid out in two factorial randomized block design, consisting of treatments i.e., four shade net viz., green, red, white, black including a controlled condition and three date of transplanting (15 Oct, 30 Oct and 15 Nov) replicated thrice. Measurement of growth and yield attributes such as plant height, number of leaves, leaf area index, dry matter, fruit weight and number of fruits obtained as well as heat units like GDD, HTU, PTU was done.  This study (2022-2023) was conducted to investigate the comparative effect of two environment (controlled field vs. shade net field) along with date of transplanting. The highest fruit number, fruit weight, marketable yield was obtained when the crop was grown under green shade net in second date of sowing October 30. The results indicated the importance of environmental factors and date of transplanting for yield optimization. The study showed that transplanting date had a significant effect on fruit number, fruit weight and marketable yield and results suggest that transplanting in the shade net at the optimal date can increase yield significantly. Thus, the use of green shade net not only protects plants from the excessive heat but also increase the metabolic process in the plants by maintain the optimum temperature from the outer environment.