Effects of Seeding Date and Planting Spaces on Growth and Yield of Swordbean (Canavalia gladiata DC.)

Swordbean was recently introduced to Korea, and cultural technique for stable production, e.g. optimum seeding date and planting space, has not been established. This experiment was conducted to elucidate the changes of growth characteristics, yield components, and yield as affected by different seeding dates and planting spaces. Days to flowering was shortened by 4∼28 days as seeding was delayed. Stem diameter, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, 100-seed weight, and seed yield tended to increase with delaying seeding up to 5 April and then to decrease with further delaying seeding. These results indicate that optimum seeding date of swordbean in unheated polyvinyl house would be early April. Although, the swordbean exhibited large increases in plant height, number of branches per plant, and stem diameter at the wider spacings, planting space could be decreased to the 60 cm plant-spacing and 30 cm row-spacing with no deleterious effect on yield.