Response of nutrients and different bagging materials on fruit growth and quality of guava (Psidium guajava L) during rainy season

Abstract

Guava is one of the important fruit being grown by the farmers as remunerative crop. The rainy season guava bears more number of fruits than winter season crop. The major problem of rainy season crop may be attributed with poor fruit size & quality because of high humidity, more infestations with insect pests and diseases resulting into shrivelled fruit size, less sweetness and poor storage life. There is ample scope to improve the fruit colour, size and high quality during rainy season crops to meet the consumer demand in order to fetch the high premium price. Pre-harvest spray of different concentrations of nutrients and fruit bagging are being used as intervention to improve the fruit colour, size and quality. Generally, the pre-harvest application of nutrient plays an important role in promoting fruit growth & development along with fruit quality of guava as it acts readily compared to conventional methods of fertilizer application. Nutrients applied through foliar applications are absorbed quickly through leaves of stomata and easily available to plants for their growth. The present investigation was carried out during 2022-23 in factorial randomized block design with two factors viz; varieties and nutrients to improve the fruit growth, quality and fruit yield of guava varieties during rainy season. Guava cultivars viz. Allahabad Safeda & Lalit are considered to be factor and foliar spray of five concentrations each of 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 0.5% & 0.75 calcium nitrate and potassium nitrate 1%, 3%, 0.5%, 1.75% & 2.25% along with different bagging materials blue, yellow, black, and silver polythene and aluminium foil, brown paper bag and news paper bag which makes a total of 26 treatments. Based on experimental results, it was concluded that the treatment T3V1Yellow (Polythene) + Ca (No3)2 @ 2% was found to be the best in terms of fruit growth & development. The average number of fruit/tree (161.07), fruit weight (151.13 g), polar fruit diameter (6.83 cm), radial fruit diameter (7.13 cm), seed weight (10.19), pulp weight (140.94 g), pulp: seed ratio (13.83), pulp % (93.26) with an average yield (97.37 kg/ha) along with minimum deformity & spoilage (10.20%) of fruits during rainy season.