Abstract

This work was carried out at the experimental orchard of Pomology Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University to study the effect of spraying gibberellic acid (GA3) (25 and 50 ppm), camphor oil (2 and 3 cm3 /L) and a mixture of them on fruit quality of "Manfalouty pomegranate" cultivar. The selected pomegranate trees were divided into three groups, the first group was sprayed at 6 weeks after fruit setting (the 1st time), the second group was sprayed at 6 weeks after the 1st time (The 2nd time), and the third group was sprayed twice (at the 1st and the 2nd time) during 2016 and 2017 seasons. Since both of GA3 and camphor oil play an important role in physiological and biological processes of plants. Recently, camphor oil was successfully used in synthezing carbon nanotubes as chemical vapor deposition process (Kumar and Ando, 2007). Hence, the main objective of this study was to examine spraying a mixture of GA3 (25 and 50 ppm) plus camphor oil (2 and 3 cm3 /L) on improving fruit quality of Manfalouty pomegranate cv. According to the obtained results of this investigation all the treatments, specially the mixture of GA3 and camphor oil increased fruit weight (g), aril weight/fruit, juice volume (cm3 )/100 g arils as well as the TSS % and TSS/TA ratio in fruit juice. Also, this mixture slightly decreased both of peel weight/fruit and the titratable acidity % (TA) during the two studied seasons. Therefore, it could be recommended that spraying with a mixture of gibberellic acid (GA3) plus camphor oil for improving fruit quality of Manfalouty pomegranate cv. under the conditions of this study.

Keywords: Gibberellic acid, Camphor oil, Manfalouty Pomegranate cv., Fruit quality