Vol. 12, Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
Bhupendra Sagore, Kanhaiya Singh, Jai Prakash, Sanjay K Singh, Vartika Srivastava, Vignesh M and Brijesh Kumar Yadav

Abstract:
Papaya (Carica papaya L.) is a very important tropical fruit crop, widely grown across the world with many nutritional and medicinal benefits. During the ripening process, major hormonal changes occur, which gives a better scope for quality improvement by applying plant growth regulators exogenously. In the present study, different plant growth regulators, viz. ethrel (100, 120 ppm), ABA (10^-6 M, 10^-4 M) and MeJA (10^-5 M, 10^-3 M) were applied at 140 days old fruit (DOF) to know their effect on fruit physico-chemical parameters at ripening. Among all the treatments, application of 120 ppm ethrel improved the peel (L^* 61.00, a^* 12.50 and b^* 38.23) and pulp (L^* 47.70, a^* 25.96. and b^* 33.80) colour, TSS (11.36 ⁰B), reducing sugars (3.14%), total sugars (7.67%), flavonoids (21.18 mg/100 g), CUPRAC activity (4.77 µmol/g) and lycopene content (3.78 mg/100 g) of fruits, while, total phenols (24.01 mg GAE/100 g), ascorbic acid (81.42 mg/100 g), total carotenoids (4.22 mg/100 g), and β-carotene content (3.74 mg/100 g) were enhanced after the application of the 10^-5 MeJA. It was also observed that a higher concentration of ABA (10^-4 M) did not prove better than ethrel and MeJA, although it was found to be slightly superior over the control for most of the parameters.