Two rows of seedlings were evenly transplanted along the edge of each furrow. The plant rows were oriented in a north–south direction for better interception of sunlight. At 3–10 DAT, the entire
soil surface was covered with clear, 0.005 mm thick polyethylene film to reduce soil evaporation and to increase soil temperature. At 30–40 DAT, the stems were hung with plastic string to a trellis system,
and the flowers were manually treated using p-chlorophenoxy acetic acid solution in all plots.