Pumpkin is extensively cultivated and consumed in Brazil, in a special way in Northeast Region. The spacing between and within the line is crucial for the development and production of the crop. The experiment was carried out in Petrolina, Pernambuco state, Brazil, from May to September, 2005. We evaluated different planting spacings on yield of pumpkin accessions and one cultivar. The experimental design was complete randomized blocks in factorial scheme 5x3, consisting of five selected accessions from the Germplasm Active Bank of Pumpkin (accessions A422, A612, A620 and A627) and Jacarezinho cultivar as control, and three spacing values within planting rows (4x1; 4x2 and 4x3 m) with four replications. Highest yield was presented by accession A612 (17.3 t ha-1), followed by accession A422 (15.2 t ha-1), with worst performance from cultivar Jacarezinho (12.2 t ha-1), without differing from the other treatments. For plant spacing the highest yields were obtained in the smaller spacing (4x1 m) with 18.2 t ha-1, and lower yield in the spacing of 4x3 m (11.9 t ha-1). The accession A612 showed the highest fresh fruit mass (3.5 kg fruit-1) without statistical difference from accession A422 (3.2 kg fruit-1). The cultivar Jacarezinho and accession A620 with respectively 1.9 and 2.0 kg fruit-1 presented the lowest values of fresh fruit mass as well as the largest number of fruits per plant (4.7 and 4.6, respectively).
Cucurbita moschata; yield; spacings; cultivars; accessions
