Quality improvement in lemon (Citrus limon (L.) Burm.) through integrated management of fruit cracking

The studies on management of fruit cracking were carried out for three consecutive years (2006 to 2008) using integrated approach. The plant material was selected from "Punjab Government Progeny Orchard and Nursery, Attari, Amritsar". The investigation comprised three sets of experiments during the fruiting years 2006 and 2007. The first experiment comprised irrigation and mulching practices; the second consisted of graded doses of farmyard manure (FYM), inorganic fertilizer and biofertilizer and in the third experiment foliar spray of 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), K2SO4 and Borax were applied. The statistically best treatments accrued from three different experiments during 2007 and 2008 were combined and tested in 2008. It was revealed that the optimum utilization of different orchard cultural practices viz. proper water management, appropriate fertilizer programme and good preventive spray schedule brought profound changes in fruit cracking intensity. Hence, the consortium of intelligent management practices such as irrigation at 20% available soil moisture depletion (ASMD), mulching with black polythene, application of FYM (75 kg/tree), inorganic fertilizer (Nitrogen 350 g/tree), azotobacter (18 g/tree) and foliar spray of NAA at 40 ppm in lemon cv. Baramasi substantially reduced the cracking losses by 94.5% and resulted in impressive impact on fruit quality. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]