This study was conducted during the two fall seasons of 1995 and 1996 at
Sids Horticulture Experiment Station to stud1 four planting dates of squash us"
August, 1^st September, is" September and 1^s October), the Eskandarani variety was
used in the experiments. These experiments was to study the effect of planting date
on growth, yield, fruit quality as well as the spread of cucurbita viruses on squash
plants during these planting dates. The obtained results indicated that increasing the
percentage of infection squash plants with virus diseases was increased in the first,
second and third planting dates, while was lower in fourth planting date. The first
planting date gave highest infection percentages with virus diseases, which were
100% and 97.9% in the first and second season, respectively, while were 25.6% and
20.3% for fourth planting date in both season, respectively. These differences of
infection percentage of plants between various planting dates were reflected on
vegetative growth, yield component and fruit characteristics, where as, the fourth
planting date gave significantly higher in all measurements of growth, yield and fruit
quality under this study, while the first and second planting dates were low values of
all measurements under the study. The third planting date was medium of percentage
of non marketable yield because the late infection with virus diseases. In summary to
get good squash yield and best quality, sowing of squash plants in fall season at
middle of Egypt sowing could be during October month.