Author(s):

DD Sharma, Bindu Bala, Niranjan Singh and DP Sharma

Abstract: The apple cultivars produce few lateral shoots because of apical dominance. At present, progeny trees are pruned severely which stimulate strong thick lateral branches with limited graftable bud wood. So, there is a need to produce maximum budwood of commercially important cultivars to meet the demand of growers. In order to stimulate regular succession of new growth over the entire tree canopy, some workers have attempted heading back of a part of the previous season’s growth. In this experiment different treatments of pruning and benzyl adenine (BA) were given to four different cultivars namely, Vance Delicious, Early Red One, Gale Gala and Red Chief were applied viz., heading back to 10 cm, heading back to 15 cm, heading back to 20 cm, heading back to 10 cm + Pinching, heading back to 15 cm + Pinching, heading back to 20 cm + Pinching, heading back to 10 cm + BA 500 ppm, heading back to 15 cm + BA 500 ppm, heading back to 20 cm + BA 500 ppm and Control. In all there were nine combinations of pruning levels and BA treatments and were compared with control. The results revealed that maximum graftable scion wood (64.83 %), total number of shoots (124.33), number of lateral shoots (111.50), spread (2.40 m) and volume (12.47 m3) were recorded in the trees treated with heading back to 20 cm + BA at 500 ppm. However, average shoot length (136.00 cm), diameter of thin, standard and thick shoots (3.85, 7.92 and 13.44 mm, respectively), internodal length (2.95 cm), pruning wood weight (5.62 kg per tree) and leaf area (34.50 cm2) was found to be maximum in Heading back to 10 cm in combination with BA application at 500ppm concentration in different apple cultivars under study.

Pages: 3026-3032  |  1062 Views  280 Downloads

Download (503KB)