Improving fruit cracking resistance of wonderful pomegranates

Abstract EN

The present investigation was carried out in two successive seasons of 2015 and 2016 on Wonderful“ Pomegranates trees grown in sandy soil under drip irrigation system in a private orchard located at Giza governorate, Egypt .

Trees were sprayed two times (at fruits size 8-10 mm & Respraying at one month later) with Potassium silicate at (2500 & 5000 ppm) , Boron at(5 &10%) , Kaolin (1 &2% ) , Zinc oxidase (1000 & 2000 ppm) with wrapping as a commercial treatments .

Spraying started at July in the two seasons to improve fruit cracking resistance “Wonderful“ pomegranates and study their effects upon yield components, physical and chemical fruit properties.

Results indicated that the “Wonderful“ pomegranates cultivar had the highest values of fruit weight and the minimum cracking values were obtained by spraying Boron at (5 %) and potassium silicate at (5000 ppm) in both seasons and this treatments gave the maximum values with total yield/tree, /feddan and Marketable yield/tree, /feddan .Meanwhile ,number of arils per fruit ,total soluble solids , total sugar ,total acidity , (arils)/fruit weight was not affected but when trees treated with wrapping, without wrapping and zinc oxidase at (1000 ppm) sprays gave the minimum mentioned above characteristics.

However, fruit weight, arils weight, ascorbic acid, anthocyanin and tannins %were increased as influenced by foliar spraying with all treatments in both studied seasons.