PERFORMANCE OF MUSAMBI SWEET ORANGE ON ROUGH LEMON AND VOLKAMERIANA ROOTSTOCKS AT SARGODHA, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Musambi (Citrussinensis) is the commercial variety of the sweet oranges group well flourishing inPakistan. Formany years Musambi has beenon the way of rapid decline with reduced life span besides drastic reduction in yield and fruit quality grafted on rough lemon rootstock. To overcome this problem, Volkameriana as an alternative rootstock to rough lemon was tested with the focus to find out more compatible rootstock to prevent mentioned issues. Observations on different plant growth parameters such as plant height, stock and scion circumference, canopy volume, plant fruit yield and important quality characteristics of fruit were made. The rough lemon depicted statistically significant result in plant height, spread and canopy volume in responses recorded for 10 years consecutively from 2008 to 2017. The degree of compatibility in both rootstocks in the year 2008 to 2009 were statistically non-significant. The yield was measured in terms of average No. of fruits per plant depicted that Rough Lemon and Volkameriana rootstock produced  average 362.62 and 228.04 No. of fruits per plant respectively for the years 2012 to 2017. Moreover, results in different important quality characters i.e. fruit weight (g), Peel thickness (mm), Juice percentage, TSS and acidity were found better in the case of the plants grafted on Rough Lemon with the mean values of  176.23, 3.35, 46.56, 10.51 and 0.41respectively  for the six years consecutive  2012-2017. Results of studied rootstocks with context to given parameters remained at par; so other promising rootstocks should be taken in account for further studies