Quality Improvement Studies in Pomegranate Under Sub-Tropics of India

Understanding Phenological Stages of Pomegranates vis-à-vis Flowering and Fruiting Regulation

“…Spring flowering in northern India is desired due to copious flowering and the prevailing hot and dry climate during fruit development stages, which produces remunerative returns (Singh et al 2011); there is more incidence of pest and disease attacks during the rainy season, usually damaging the rainy season flowering crop (Singh et al 2006). However, the provision of irrigation should be taken into consideration when choosing spring flowering as there is a chance of fruit drop in spring flowering owing to moisture stress at the time of fruit set and development under the dryland conditions of Central Gujarat (Raturi & Hiwale 1991).…”

“…Hand thinning encourages flower initiation (Singh et al 2011;Jafari et al 2014;Fattahi et al 2020), while chemical sprays inhibit flower induction with the maximum inhibition with Carbaryl (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) followed by maleic hydrazide (Ahire et al 1993). The stimulation of flowering by hand thinning might be attributed to endogenous production of ethylene as a result of wounding (Krishna 2012).…”

“…The trees deblossomed on earlier dates scored more due to the presence of good-sized fruits, which in turn depends on the optimum crop load and higher leaf : fruit ratio. Thus, the deblossoming of unopened flower buds should be carried out between 15th and 22nd April in order to regulate cropping during spring flowering and to obtain the optimum fruit size and higher net market returns in pomegranate cultivars Ganesh-1 and Kandhari under Punjab conditions (Singh et al 2011). The development of higher proportions of flowers in plants where deblossoming was followed, illustrates that early deblossoming might have exhilarated the latent buds to flower, which otherwise flowered in the next flowering season under Punjab conditions.…”

“…Ultimately, this will lead to profuse flowering, and fruiting and harvesting of fruits will occur after 4-5 months of flowering (Singh et al 1967;Patil & Karale 1985;Asrey et al 2007;Chandra et al 2011a;Kumar et al 2016). Similarly, the phenological stages such as 51 (emergence of the flower buds), 55 (swollen calyx), 59 (opening of the calyx), 61 (open flower) are the most suitable stages for the adoption of the practice of deblossoming to regulate the crop (Singh et al 2006;Singh et al 2011). In like manner, Chaudhari and Desai (1993) reported that crop regulation by using the practice of chemical thinning can be done at 51 (emergence of the flower buds), 55 (swollen calyx), 59 (opening of the calyx), and 61 (open flower), 67 (petal fall), 69 (fruit setting), and 71 (young fruits) phenological stages in pomegranate.…”