Influence of plant growth substances on vegetative growth, flowering, fruiting and fruit quality of papaya

Abstract

The study revealed that gibberellic acid - GA3 (100 and 150 ppm) increased the vegetative growth of papaya plant in terms of height and physical characters of fruit in terms of length, diameter and weight while 2, 3, 5 - triodo benzoic acid - TIBA (100 and 150 ppm) had a greater effect on increasing the girth of stem, spread of plant, number of fruits per plant and yield per plant. Among the PGRs, TIBA (100 and 150 ppm) and ethrel (200 and 300 ppm) proved to be best particularly in the reduction of number of days taken for sex differentiation and promotion of femaleness, respectively while both TIBA and ethrel were found to be best for improving the quality of fruit. Therefore, it is worthwhile to manipulate these plant growth substances for getting desirable characters like vegetative growth, appropriate sex form and better quality fruits in papaya.