FRUIT THINNING IMPROVES POMEGRANATE FRUIT QUALITY BY ACTIVATING PHYSICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOCHEMICAL AND BIOACTIVE ATTRIBUTES

The excessive fruit load on various fruit trees is an obstacle in achieving sustainable production. Fruit thinning helps to improve fruit quality attributes by reducing crop load. Therefore, a field study was carried out to evaluate the impact of fruit thinning on pomegranate. The four levels of fruit thinning were applied that including without thinning of a cluster (control), keeping three fruits (T1), two fruits (T2) and one fruit per cluster (T3). The effect of fruit thinning on physical and biochemical quality attributes of three pomegranate cultivars (Sindhuri, Kalehar and Sava) were evaluated during two consecutive growing seasons (2018 and 2019). The results revealed that Sindhuri followed by Kalehar and Sava showed significant improvement in fruit weight, fruit length, fruit width, A-grade fruit percentage, arils weight percentage, hundred arils weight, juice contents and peel redness (a*) when applied T3 (one fruit per cluster) while plant yield, peel weight percentage, peel thickness, lightness (L), yellowness (b*), fruit firmness, percentage of B grade and C grade fruits were significantellyreduced. The value of total soluble solid (TSS), pH, ascorbic acid, anthocyanin, antioxidant activity (AA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) was also improved in T3 while titratable acidity (TA), total phenolic contents (TPC) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) were reduced significantly. These observations indicate that reducing crop load by thinning (one fruit per cluster) could be a viable strategy to improve fruit quality attributes in pomegranate fruit. Conclusively, one fruit per cluster (T3) significantly improved fruit's physical and biochemical attributes in pomegranate cultivars (Sindhuri, Kalehar and Sava).