Effect of Pre-Harvest Spray of Chemicals on Quality, Yield and Storage Life of Litchi Fruits

Abstract

Poor fruit set and retention followed by sun burning and cracking is a serious physiological disorder in litchi which is causing significant economic loss. Besides these, the pre-harvest quiescent infection with blight, anthracnose etc is also causing huge losses at post harvest stage. Considering these problems an experiment was conducted during 2010-13 to evaluate the effect of pre-harvest spray of various chemicals on fruit quality, yield and storage life of litchi fruits. Eight chemical treatments were sprayed twice on litchi fruits cv. Shahi, during fruit development stage and observations related to fruit retention, sun burning, cracking, fruit weight and other quality parameters were recorded and analyzed. The result showed that the combined spray of carbendazim (0.2%) and KNO3 (4 and 2%) gave the highest fruit yield (26.06 kg/tree) and increased fruit retention by 26.10%, whereas minimum fruit cracking and sun burning (13.54%) was observed under combined spray of GA3 (50 and 100 ppm) and carbendazim (0.2%). The minimum fruit yield (18.01Kg/tree) and maximum percentage of discarded fruits (36.53%) were recorded in case of control (water spray). KNO3 treatments delayed the maturity of litchi fruits by 3.33 days whereas GA3 has advanced the maturity by 2.67 days and also gave uniform colour development. It has also been found that carbendazim treated fruits gave least decay loss (5.56%) after 5 days of storage at ambient condition.