Know the Correct Way to Market every Pomegranate of your field

The major physiological disorder “Fruit cracking” is making fruits unfit for market, which caused an irrecoverable loss for farmer. Here are the causes & control measures for physiological disorder in pomegranate….

Pomegranate is a favorite table fruit in tropical & subtropical regions of the world. In India it is a well-known & widely grown fruit. The fruit is liked for its cool & refreshing juice besides its use as a table fruit. It also possesses various medicinal properties.

Fruit Cracking: It is a serious problem & is more intense under dry conditions of the arid zone. The fully grown mature cracked fruits though sweet, lose it’s keeping quality & becomes unfit for marketing. They are liable to rot qualitatively. The cracked fruits show a reduction in their fruit weight, grain weight & volume of juice.

It is mainly associated with the fluctuation of soil moisture, day & temperature, relative humidity & rind pliability. This disorder may also develop due to boron deficiency in young fruits & moisture imbalance in mature ones.

Prolonged drought causes the hardening of the peel. If this is followed by heavy irrigation or rains the pulp grows & peels cracks. The cracking of fruits is also due to a rise in air temperature during fruit growth & development. It is also a varietal character since the rind thickness & texture are related to proneness to cracking.

The percentage of cracked fruits is also related to the season. Mrig-bahar (June-July) crop is more susceptible to fruit cracking because of variation in humidity. Ordinarily, regular rains are received up to August, so that the fruit continues to develop. If there is a break in rains the growth of the fruit is arrested.

As a result of this dry period, the skin loses its elasticity & becomes hard. When there is rain again the growth restarts resulting in the cracking of fruits because of the lack of elasticity of fruit rind.

Control:

• Adequate & regular irrigation & interculture throughout the bearing period.

• Cultivating tolerant/ less prone types like Karkai, Guleshah, Bedana, KHog&Jalore seedless & avoiding cultivation of susceptible varieties like vellodu, Kabul & khandhari.

• Spraying Borax@ 0.1 to 0.2%.

• Spraying of GA3 in the month of June at 250ppm.

• Planting windbreaks around the garden.