Studies on horticultural aspects of mango malformation
1989
Majumder, P.K. | Diware, D.V.
During the last two decades or so, the problem of mango malformation has assumed an alarming magnitude in the Northern region of India and the very survival of the mango industry is being threatened. In general, there are two types of malformation-vegetative and floral. The later is directly responsible for rendering the trees unproductive. The extent of malformation varies with the prevailing climatic conditions of the country. Floral malformation is almost absent in South India which includes Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. In Punjab, the incidence of malformation is the highest. It is wide-spread in UP, and negligible in Bihar and Maharashtra. In Gujarat, the extent is quite heavy in the Northern districts. Floral malformation is rare in West Bengal but vegetative malformation is present in some nurseries. It has now been established that malformed panicles show: (a) suppression of apical dominance, (b) production solely male flowers, (c) presence of inhibitors and (d) high temperature response. The approaches on the improvement of fruiting of trees rendered unproductive through malformation were made on the basis of fundamental work referred above. NAA, which is known to increase perfect flowers, was found to improve the fruiting in malformed panicles to a great extent. Deblossoming treatment at bud burst stage improved fruit set. It is now possible to obtain optimum crop from the trees rendered unproductive through floral malformation by giving a single spray of NAA (200 ppm) during October followed by deblossoming treatment at bud burst stage during December-January. The yield increase is of the order 5 to 20 times in comparison to yield of untreated affected trees of different varieties.
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