Studies on pre-harvest fruit bagging on fruit characters, fruit yield and economics of pomegranate cv. Phule Bhagwa Super

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during 2019-2020 to investigate the effects of pre-harvest fruit bagging on the characteristics, yield and economic aspects of pomegranate cv. Phule Bhagwa Super. The experiment was set in Randomized Block Design with six treatments, each replicated four times. The bagging treatments included Butter paper bag (T1), Brown paper bag (T2), Parchment bag (T3), English newspaper bag (60 gsm) (T4), Marathi newspaper bag (35 gsm) (T5), and Control (no bagging) (T6). These treatments were applied to pomegranate fruits 30 days after fruit set. Results indicated a significant impact of bagging treatments on fruit characteristics and yield. Fruits enclosed in Parchment bags (T3) exhibited increased weight (316.44 g) with the highest fruit yield (25.68 kg per plant and 19.0 t ha -1 ). Additionally, this treatment showed the highest aril percentage (72.89%), elevated Total Soluble Solids (TSS) content (15.48 0 B), maximum total sugar content (13.91%), and moderate acidity (0.32%). No cracked and sun burnt fruits were observed in all bagging treatments. Incidence of fruit borer were absent in the bagging treatments except for those using bags made from Marathi newspaper. The fruits remained unaffected by oily spots. Among all bagging treatments, the use of parchment bags recorded the highest Benefit-Cost (B:C) ratio of 2.64. Thus, pomegranate fruit bagging with parchment bag was found to be most promising and cost effective.