Abstract:The research of fruit bagging was conducted in a farmer’s solar greenhouse in Yangling, Shaanxi Province from April to July 2005 with four different types of bags: the white plastic film bag (WFB), the freshness-keeping plastic film bag (FFB), the white paper bag (WPB) and the yellow paper bag (YPB), in which cucumber fruit of cv. Dongguan No. 3 was bagged. The objectives are first to rate the effectiveness of fruit bagging with different types of bags in controlling the residual chemical pesticides which are now commonly used to control pests in cucumber production, and second to investigate the bio-effects of fruit bagging on fruit growth and quality to evaluate the feasibility of fruit bagging technique in cucumber production. The no-bagging of fruit was taken as the control (CK). Two experiments were carried out in this research, one was to bag only one fruit on a plant (one-fruit-bagging) and the second was to bag all the fruits on a plant (successive-fruit-bagging). The experiments were replicated three times and randomly arranged in the greenhouse. The treatment was conducted by choosing the newly opening female flower, measuring the length of the ovary, artificially pollinating the flower, and then bagging the female flower (young fruit) with a bag. The sample plants were sprayed with the testing pesticide oxidized dimethoate twice. The micro-environment was measured, which include the temperature, the relative humidity (RH) and the light intensity both outside and inside the bag during the period of fruit growing. The sample fruits were harvested to examine fruit morphology, yield, nutritive quality and the residual of the testing pesticide. The results show that on both sunny and cloudy days, light intensity inside all the bags is weakened, while RH and temperature increased. The highest temperature increase is in WPB and the highest RH increase is in FFB. The lowest level of light intensity record is in YPB. Both one-fruit-bagging and the successive-fruit-bagging on a plant show that the fresh weight (FW) growth rate and fruit length are increased by different levels according to different bagging treatments. The color of fruit skin is lightened markedly in all four treatments of both experiments. With the successive-fruit-bagging, the single fruit weight is generally increased, the rate of big-head fruit is decreased, but the rate of aborted fruit, the rate of crooked fruit and the rate of pointed-head fruit are increased. Compared with the control, the content of free amino acids is increased, the amount of vitamin C is not changed markedly, but the content of chlorophyll and carotenoid are decreased. The content of soluble protein in fruit in WPB and FFB are increased, but reduced in YPB and WFB. There is no marked difference in soluble protein between those treatments and the control. The residual of testing pesticide in the harvested fruit is effectively reduced by all the treatment of fruit bagging. YPB appears to be the best, which reduces the residual by 766%. FFB, WFB and WPB decrease the residual by 71.6%, 69.8% and 68.9% respectively. In comprehensive consideration, WPB is recommended first. FFB and WFB are thought not suitable to use in the spring-summer growth season.