Effect of Different Growing Media On Growth, Yield and Fruit Quality of Strawberry (Fragaria × Ananassa Duch.) Cv. ‘Winter Dawn’
摘要
Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa Duch.) is a delicious, refreshing and nutritious soft berry fruit with an increasing demand all year round. The present investigation was carried out to elucidate the effect of different growing media mixtures including T0: (control) soil, T1: soil + sand, T2: soil + sand + FYM, T3: soil + sand + cocopeat and T4: soil + sand + vermicompost on plant growth, yield and fruit quality of strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa Duch.) cv. ‘Winter Dawn’. The results showed that treatment T2 has positive influence on the plant height (19.70 cm), fruit set (94.11%), fruit length (4.82 cm), fruit diameter (3.59 cm) and yield per plant (302.39 g). The treatment T4 performed better in terms of the crown diameter (17.33 mm), plant spread in North-South (23.81 cm) and East West direction (25.28 cm), leaf area (57.37 cm2), chlorophyll ‘a’ (1.53 mg/g), chlorophyll ‘b’ (0.51 mg/g) and total chlorophyll (2.05 mg/g), plant fresh weight (30.58 g) and dry weight (7.53 g) and fresh weight (9.32g) and dry weight (1.97 g) of roots. In terms of fruit biochemical attributes such as TSS (9.46 °Brix), reducing sugar (2.85%), non-reducing sugar (2.42%), total sugar (5.40%), ascorbic acid (51.53 mg/100 g), flavonoids (236.62 mg/100 g) and antioxidant activity (93.83%), the treatment T2 was found to be more significant. The treatment T4 recorded significantly highest values for number of flowers (23.26), trusses per plant (3.87) and number of fruits per plant (21.60) where the values were at par with treatment T2. The overall findings of the study stated that the treatment T2 was found to be better in plant growth, fruit morphological parameters, fruit quality and biochemical aspects as compared to control (T0).