Effect of pre-harvest bagging on fruit yield, physiological disorders, pest and diseases in pomegranate

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of bagging on fruit weight, fruit yield physiological disorders, pest and diseases in pomegranate cv. Phule Bhagwa Super during 2019-2020 in a Randomized Block Design with six treatments which were replicated four times. The fruit were bagged 30 days after the fruit set. The bagging treatments were Butter paper bag (T1), Brown paper bag (T2), Parchment bag (T3), English newspaper bag (T4) (60 gsm), Marathi newspaper bag (T5) (35 gsm) and Control (T6) (without bagging). The results showed that bagging treatments significantly influenced the fruit weight and yield. Bagging treatments also significantly reduced the physiological disorders namely fruit cracking and sun burn injury as well as incidence of insect-pests namely fruit borer, mealy bug and bacterial disease oily spot. Thus pre-harvest bagging appears to be environmental friendly and effective tool to protect pomegranate fruits from physiological disorders, pest and diseases and also to improve the quality of fruit.