Branch Bending for Crop Regulation in Guava under Hot and Humid Climate of Eastern India

Abstract

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) exhibits two distinct periods of flowering, i.e., spring (Ambe bahar) and rainy (Mrig bahar) under hot and humid climate of Odisha. Ambe bahar gives the rainy crop whereas, mrig bahar gives the winter crop. Though, the quantum of production is low during winter yet, it fetches high market value and superior in quality. Considering the fruit quality and better market price of winter guava, a field experiment was carried out on five-year-old plants of guava cv. 'Lucknow-49' at research farm of Central Horticultural Experiment Station-ICAR-IIHR, Bhubaneswar during 2013-2015. The objective was to standardize the crop regulation technique in guava for obtaining winter crop. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with five treatments, i.e., shoot pruning at 30, 50 and 70% intensity, branch bending and control. Each treatment was replicated four times with four plants in each replicate. Treatments were imposed in May. Observations recorded on shoot growth showed that, the branch bending treatment contains the growth (56.91cm) of newly emerged shoots whereas, shoot pruning resulted in production of vigorous (83.68 ±3.95cm) shoots as compare to control (68.10cm). The same treatment was found very effective in inducing flowering (46.27%) and recorded the highest yield (26.48kg plant^-1) whereas, pruning did not show yield improvement over the control. Fruit quality parameters, viz., total soluble solids (10.18°B) and vitamin C content (204.6 mg 100g pulp^-1) were also improved by the branch bending.