Effect of foliar application of Boron, Zinc and NAA on fruit retention, yield and quality attributes of Aonla

Abstract

To investigate the effect of foliar application of boron, zinc and naphthalene acetic acid on fruit retention, yield and quality attributes of aonla, an experiment was carried out in the Horticulture Garden of C. S. Azad university of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur (u.P.), India, during two subsequent years i.e., 2018 and 2019, using ten treatments viz., borax at 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5%, zinc sulphate 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6% and NAA at 10, 20 and 40ppm including a control (water spray) on eighteen years old plants of aonla cv. NA-7, replicated thrice in randomized block design. From the experiment it is reported that higher concentration of NAA (40ppm) significantly reduced fruit drop (68.85 and 67.95%) and increases fruit retention (31.15 and 32.05%) during both years of experimentation. It also gave maximum fruit yield (85.10 and 83.25 kg/plant), resulted an increased fruit length (4.24 and 3.99cm), width (4.95 and 4.80cm), weight (36.45 and 37.07g), volume (34.15 and 33.15cc), specific gravity (1.18 and 1.15g/cc), pulp weight (34.87 and 35.55g) and maximum pulp: stone ratio (23.63 and 25.40%, respectively) during both years of experimentation. Plant treated with borax @ 0.5% results an increase in ascorbic acid content (640.03 and 630.05 mg/100g, respectively), reduces stone weight (1.50 and 1.45g, respectively) and titratable acidity (1.36 and 1.30%, respectively) during both years of experimentation, while zinc sulphate at 0.6% treatment results in significantly increase in TSS (15.210 and 14.930 brix, respectively) and total sugars (13.00 and 12.80%, respectively) during both years of experimentation.