Quality improvement of winter guava cv.l-49 through various mulches

A field study was conducted in the guava orchard of Department of Horticulture, Khalsa College, Amritsar during 2017-2018 to study the effect of various mulches on yield and quality of guava cv. L-49. The plants of guava were mulched with paddy straw (10 cm, 15 cm and 20 cm), sugarcane trash (10 cm, 15 cm and 20 cm),black, green, silver, white polythene mulch, grass and control. The investigation was laid out in RBD with twelve treatment combinations replicated thrice. Results of the study showed that paddy straw (15 cm) increased the physical parameters of fruits with the maximum fruit weight (160.20 g), fruit length (10.10 cm), fruit breadth (6.53 cm) and fruit volume (195.00g/cc) while the black polythene mulch improved the biochemical characters reporting maximum TSS (8.87oBrix), total sugars (5.76%), reducing sugars(3.92%), ascorbic acid content(190.88 mg/100g) and minimum acidity (0.21%) respectively. Hence, application of black polyethylene mulch improved the quality of guava fruits.