Effect of pre-harvest application of GA3, Naphthalene acetic acid and borax on fruit drop, yield and quality of Mango cv. Amrapali

Abstract

To investigate the effect of pre-harvest application of GA3, Naphthalene acetic acid and borax on fruit drop, yield and quality of Mango cv. Amrapali, an experiment was carried out in the Garden, Department of Horticulture, C. S. Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur (U.P.) during the cropping season 2018-2019. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replication and ten treatments viz., GA3 @ 25 ppm (T1), GA3 @ 50 ppm (T2), GA3 @ 75 ppm (T3), NAA @ 20 ppm (T4), NAA @ 40 ppm (T5), NAA @ 40 ppm (T6), NAA @ 60 ppm (T7), borax @ 0.2% (T8), borax @ 0.4% (T9) including a control or water spray (T10). Spraying of plant growth regulators and micronutrient was done at pea stage of fruits set on 2st March, 2019.From the results obtained during present experimentation, it is reported that pre-harvest spraying of GA3 at 25 ppm results significant decrease in fruit drop (85.77%) with increase in fruit retention (14.23 %) and number of fruits per panicle (6.43). Plants sprayed with the GA3 at 50 ppm results significantly more fruit yield (50.67 kg/tree) of fruits having more polar (9.11 cm) and equatorial diameter (7.39 cm), more pulp (74.56%), pulp: stone ratio (7.12) with decrease in peel (14.94%) and stone per cent (10.51%). Increased fruit weight (244.59 g), volume (255.43 cc), specific gravity (1.09 g/cc), total soluble solids (18.36 0Brix), total sugars (17.75%), ascorbic acid (37.60 mg/100g) were also found with the pre-harvest spraying of GA3 at 75 ppm, whereas titratable acidity (0.50%) contents in the fruits ware drastically reduced under this treatment.