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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Kachchh, the largest district of Gujarat has very fragile environment and poor natural resources. Under such conditions, the cultivation of perennial component of vegetation, particularly the fruit trees, would provide opportunity for sustainable source of livelihood to the inhabitants of the region. Kachchh has about 18 percent potential area to grow fruit trees but under the aforesaid environment and edaphic conditions, the establishment, growth and economic life remain poor. In view of these, an experiment was conducted to study the effect of planting and soil working techniques on growth performance of fruit trees in Kachchh region at CAZRI farm, Kukma, Bhuj. The treatments comprised four types of soil working structures viz., ordinary pit, saucer pit, ring pit and shelf trench and of two means of planting (a) in-situ sowing of seeds and (b) 6-8 month old nursery raised transplanting seedlings. The fruit species experimented were mango, aonla and custard apple. The germination percentage, initial survival percentage and stem girth were observed higher in nursery-raised plants than in-situ planted plants. However, plant height and final survival percentage was recorded more under in-situ than nursery-raised plants. The soil working technique of saucer shaped pit had better effect on plant height and collar diameter, while, more survival percentage was observed under shelfed trench over the rest of the pits irrespective of the fruit crop species. The results indicated that among fruit trees, the plant height of aonla was 46.78 and 56.20 percent higher than mango and custard apple respectively after two years of sowing.