Vol. 12, Issue 4 (2023)

Author(s):
Manoj Kumar Sahu, GL Sharma, Prabhakar Singh, Hamant Kumar Panigrahi, Tapas Chowdhury and RR Saxena

Abstract:
Papaya is a very useful versatile fruit crop grown in India for its delicious fruit, green mannuring as well as nutritional purpose in various regions of India. Papaya is an evergreen plant having hollow, softwood stem and generally unbranched. The leaves are palm like with very long petiole. Naturally growing plants are erect and fruits are of various shapes like round or spherical to oblong produced from the axils of the leaves. Inside the fruit central cavity is having large number of seeds, remain attach with placenta. Sometimes, seeds are absent in the fruit. It was introduced in India in 16th century from Malacca (Kumar and Abrahm, 1943). It has become a popular fruit due to its fast growth, high yield, long fruiting period and high nutrient value as well. In addition, it has been used as vegetable, fruit processing and papain production at immature stage. It became a highly profitable crop now. It is easy to grow and rich in nutrient content. It is highly valued for its digestive properties. The nutritive and medicinal properties of papaya are well known. In recent years, attention has been mainly given to use of growth regulators in modification of growth, flowering, fruiting, fruit quality and yield of different fruit crops. The effect of growth regulators in papaya on number of fruit, fruit yield, fruit weight, fruit diameter, seedling vigour, flowering and fruit setting, sex expression and quality parameters i.e. total soluble solids, ascorbic acid, acidity and sugar content have been studied by several workers. The different plant growth regulators like Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA), Gibberellic acid (GA3) and 2, 3, 5-Triiodobenzoic acid (TIBA) have been found important to alter the growth, yield and quality parameters of papaya fruit. Naphthalene acetic acid is an auxin, which is very effective in controlling and directing a number of plant metabolic processes. Foliar sprays of NAA have been found to control pre-mature drop of fruits and increasing size of fruits in papaya. Gibberellic acid plays an important role in increasing the fruit set, fruit weight, length, girth, carotenoid and protein content, while decrease the pectin content in papaya fruit. Among the various anti auxins 2, 3, 5-Triiodobenzoic acid is physiologically the most active. TIBA helps to enhance femaleness in papaya, reduce plant height, and increase in plant girth and spread of plant. TIBA is also found to be best particularly for earliness to first flowering in papaya. In essence, PGR leads to the identification of superior PGR which may be recommended as cultivar and identification of verity with desirable traits for selection as higher yielding verity for improvement programmes.