CULTURAL PRACTICES

CULTURAL PRACTICES

Orchard Floor Management:-
  • Clean cultivation with mulching of the tree basin area with 15 cm thick hay grass or black polythene mulch is recommended for kiwifruit orchards.
  • During the initial two years, intercrops like strawberry, peas, beans, cowpeas and vegetable crops like tomato. ginger etc. can also be grown in the vacant area between the trees.

11.5

Nutrition:-
  • The vines make much vegetative growth, yield heavily, thus requires adequate amount of manures and fertilizers for normal vine growth and fruit production.
  • The quantity of fertilizers to be applied vary with soil fertility and age of the vine.
  • In general, a basal dose of 20 Kg FYM alongwith 0.5 Kg of NPK fertilizers mixture containing 15 per cent N be applied each year of age.
  • For fully bearing vines (8 years and above) 60-80 kg FYM, 800g N, 560g P2O5 and 1200 g K2O/vine is applied every year per vine.
  • FYM along with full dose of P2O5 and K2O is applied during December-January, while N fertilizer is applied in two equal dressing, half before bud-burst and remaining full dose at the onset of monsoon i.e. in July.
  • Application of 2/3rd dose of recommended NPK fertilizers through drip irrigation in eight equal split doses from bud burst at 10 days intervals is recommended which results 25 per cent saving of fertilizers and increase yield of quality fruits over traditional method of fertilizer application.
Irrigation:-
  • Water requirement of kiwifruit is very high because of vigrous vegetative growth and larger leaf surface area.
  • In general, fully grown vines require 80-100L of water for total daily transpiration from 16-17 m2 canopy area during summer.
  • Due to irregular distribution of rainfall in most of kiwifruit growing areas, the supplemental irrigation is important for improving productivity of fruits.
  • Young vine should be irrigated at 2-3 days intervals, while bearing vines are to be irrigated at 20% depletion of soil moisture from field capacity (5-6 days intervals) during summer to get better size fruits.
  • Drip irrigation at 100 per cent ETc gave higher yield of quality fruits.
Crop and quality regulation:-
  • All the cultivars of kiwifruit except Hayward bears heavily every year. This heavy crop create a severe competition between the fruits for water, nutrients and photosynthates, which leads to production of small size fruits. Therefore, to harvest quality crop of good size hand thinning is essential as chemical thinning is ineffective.
  • In a study on thinning in kiwifruit, hand thinning ( 20% thinning) to the extent of retaining 4-6 flower buds or fruits/ flowering shoot produced more fruits of A grade without any adverse effect on total yield as chemical thinning was found ineffective in kiwifruit.
  • In hand thinning only lateral flowers or fruits are removed .

11.6

Maturity indices, Harvesting and Marketing:-
  • In kiwifruit, determination of optimum fruit maturity is difficult because no change take place into the skin or flesh colour or size of fruit at fruit maturity.
  • A maturity index of 6.2oB TSS is considered is satisfactory for fruit harvest.
  • Days from full bloom to harvest along with TSS was found the best index to judge the optimum harvesting time.
  • Beside this, at maturity the hairs present on the fruit skin are removed very easily
  • and can be used to judge the harvesting or maturity.
  • Harvesting is done manually by giving gentle twist to fruit and fruits are plucked without stalk,
Grading and Packing:-
  • There is no standard for grading and packing in India, However,following grades are under ‘A’ grade >70g, ‘B’ grade (50-70g), ‘C’ grade <50g. but international standard of grading is ‘A’ grade is above 100g, B 70-100g. <70g is C grade.

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  • In India kiwifruit is packed in 3-5 Kg boxes of Cardboard. However in other countries the kiwifruit are packed in tray packs.
  • Standard tray consists of an out case of cartboard or plastics, a performed plastic packet tray-packs, a polliners corrugated strawboard and a cardboard lid. In a tray 33 fruits of 100 g/fruit weight are accommodated.
  • Kiwifruit has excellent keeping quality, storage of fruits should be done with hours of picking.
  • Fruits can be stored at ambient temperature for 6-7 weeks, but for good commercial storage refrigeration is necessary. It can be stored for 4-6 months in cold storage at 0oC and 90% relative humidity.
  • Fruits are eaten fresh or combined with other fruits in sealed.
  • A large number of processed products such as jam, jelly, candy, squash and wine are prepared from kiwifruit.
Last modified: Tuesday, 26 June 2012, 9:32 PM