Fundamentals of Horticulture

Mango

• Maturity (Commercial or Horticultural maturity): refers to the stage at which the produce is optimally accepted to the consumer.
• Maturity index: The maturity at harvest determines the quality and post- harvest shelf-life of the fresh fruits.
• The study of maturity indices helps to harvest the crop at right time.

Judging Maturity

• There are various means of judging maturity but they vary according to the kind of fruits, local soil and climatic conditions, but generally farmers follow visual means (appearance).
• But this is not a perfect method, many a times it may mislead the farmers.
• There are certain limitations for all maturity indices due to variation in nutrition of the crop, fruit shape, size, climate, seasonal factors, moisture, pruning method, use of hormones and other chemicals.
• We can use various indices to judge maturity.

Mango

1. Slight colour development on the shoulders.
2. When one or two ripe fruits fall from the tree naturally (tapka method).
3. Skin colour changes from dark green to olive green.
4. Counting of the days from fruit set to maturity.
5. When the specific gravity of fruits ranges between 1.01 to 1.02.
6. Flesh firmness.
7. Lenticels become more prominent and waxy bloom gradually disappears.
8. When the TSS reaches 11-15o Brix.
9. The first and second methods are not of much help since these are not representative of the fruit maturity of the entire tree and the fruits harvested do not ripe uniformly.

Matured Mango

This image is taken from wikipedia, the author of the image is "Fir0002/Flagstaffotos" flagstaffotos.com.au. We hightly attribute the work. The image is used for free learning educational work and not for any commercial purpose.