Friday

DISEASES

1.Black spot / fruit rot : (collectotrichum gloeosporoides) Symptoms : The disease starts as minute dull-violet black spots on leaves.  The area surrounding the spot turns yellow, then spots enlarge and cause drying.  
Fruit rot : Black pin head spot appear on the fruit at different ages.  The spots will be severe on mature fruits.  Black sunken spots develop and enlarge to cover larger areas of rind.  The fruit rind cracks and infection spreads to interior areas and petals also.  The petals become blackened and complete rotting occurs. 
Management :
Spraying fruits with 0.25% mancozeb or copper oxy chloride 0.25% or carbendazim 0.1% starting from one month after flowering and repeated at monthly interval (3 sprays).   
2.Bacterial leaf spot : (Xanthomonas campestris pv. punicae) Symptons :    Several minute (2-5 mm) dark coloured irregular spots surrounded by yellow tissues occur on the leaves.  Later the leaves turn yellow and prematurely drop.  The bacteria also attack fruits and cause dark brown irregular spots. 
Management :  
Spraying 250 ppm streptomycin sulphate or 400 ppm streptocycline.  
The pomegranate butterfly, Virachola isocrateslays eggs on flower-buds and the calyx of developing fruits; in a few days the caterpillars enter the fruit by way of the calyx. These fruit borers may cause loss of an entire crop unless the flowers are sprayed 2 times 30 days apart. A stem borer sometimes makes holes right through the branches. Twig dieback may be caused by either Pleuroplaconema or Ceuthospora Phyllosticta.Discoloration of fruits and seeds results from infestation by Aspergillus castaneusThe fruits may be sometimes disfigured by Sphaceloma punicaeDry rot from Phomopsis sp. or Zythia versoniana may destroy as much as 80% of the crop unless these organisms are controlled by appropriate spraying measures. Excessive rain during the ripening season may induce soft rot. A post-harvest rot caused by Alternaria solani was observed in India in 1974. It is particularly prevalent in cracked fruits.
Minor problems are leaf and fruit spot caused by Cercospora, Gloeosporium and Pestalotia sp.; also foliar damage by whitefly, thrips, mealybugs and scale insects; and defoliation by Euproctis spp. and Archyophora dentulaTermites may infest the trunk. In India, paper or plastic bags or other covers may be put over the fruits to protect them from borers, birds, bats and squirrels.
Physiological disorder: Fruit cracking is a most serious physiological disorder in pomegranate which limits its cultivation.  In young fruits it could be due to boron deficiency but fully grown fruits crack due to moisture imbalances as there are very sensitive to variations in soil moisture and humidity.  Prolonged drought causes hardening of peel and if this is followed by heavy irrigation or down pour then the pulp grows and the peel cracks.  This problem can be overcome by

    a)      Maintaining soil moisture and not allowing wide variations in soil moisture depletion,
    b)      Cultivation of tolerant varieties,
    c)      Early harvesting not allowing the fruits to crack and
    d)      Spray of calcium hydroxide on leaves and on fruit set.
The pomegranate is both self-pollinated and cross-pollinated by insects. There is very little wind dispersal of pollen. Self-pollination of bagged flowers has resulted in 45% fruit set. Cross-pollination has increased yield to 68%. In hermaphrodite flowers, 6 to 20% of the pollen may be infertile; in male, 14 to 28%. The size and fertility of the pollen vary with the cultivar and season.
The flowers of the pomegranate shrub are self-pollinating. One can also improve the fertility of the plant through cross pollination.

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Pomegranate

Introduction

Common Name: Anar

Botanical Name: Punica Granatum

Origin: Iran, Afghanistan, India

The pomegranate tree is native from Himalayas in northern India to the Iran and has been cultivated since ancient times throughout the Mediterranean region of Asia, Africa and Europe. An attractive shrub or small tree, to 20 or 30 ft recorded height, the pomegranate is much-branched, more or less spiny, and extremely long-lived. It has a strong tendency to sucker from the base. The leaves are evergreen or deciduous, opposite or in whorls of 5 or 6, short-stemmed, oblong-lanceolate. Showy flowers are home on the branch tips singly or as many as 5 in a cluster. The fruit has a tough, leathery skin or rind, basically yellow more or less overlaid with light or deep pink or rich red. The interior is separated by membranous walls and white spongy tissue (rag) into compartments packed with transparent sacs filled with tart, flavourful, fleshy, juicy, red, pink or whitish pulp (technically the aril). In each sac, there is one white or red, angular, soft or hard seed. The seeds represent about 52% of the weight of the whole fruit. The fruit also was used in many ways as it is today and was featured in Egyptian mythology and art, praised in the Old Testament of the Bible and in the Babylonian Talmud, and it was carried by desert caravans for the sake of its thirst-quenching juice. It traveled to central and southern India from Iran about the first century A.D. and was reported growing in Indonesia in 1416. It has been widely cultivated throughout India and drier parts of Southeast Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa. The most important growing regions are Egypt, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, India, Burma and Saudi Arabia. There are some commercial orchards in Israel on the coastal plain and in the Jordan Valley.

The name "pomegranate" comes from two Latin words for "seeded" and "apple", which makes a lot of sense, given that a pomegranate looks like and apple and is full of seeds. The pomegranate fruit grows on a small tree or shrub. The tree is native to the area of Persia in the Middle East, but it is now grown further abroad, including in California and Arizona. The most promising of these is the Wonderful which is the only pomegranate now being grown commercially in California.

The interior seeds are surrounded by spongy pulp, and the mess of them together makes the pomegranate particularly difficult to work with.

Steeped in history and romance and almost in a class by itself, the pomegranate, Punica granatum L., belongs to the family Punicaceae which includes only one genus and two species, the other one, little-known, being P. protopunica Balf. peculiar to the island of Socotra.

Despite its ancient background, the pomegranate has acquired only a relatively few commonly recognized vernacular names apart from its many regional epithets in India, most of which are variations on the Sanskrit dadimaor dalim, and the Persian dulim or dulima. By the French it is called grenade; by the Spanish, granada (the fruit), granado (the plant); by the Dutch, granaatappel, and Germans, granatapfel; by the Italians, melogranato, melograno granato, pomo granato, or pomo punico. In Indonesia, it is gangsalan; in Thailand, tab tim; and in Malaya, delima. Brazilians know it as roma, romeira or romazeira. The Quecchi Indian name in Guatemala is granad. The Samoan name is limoni. The generic term, Punica, was the Roman name for Carthage from whence the best pomegranates came to Italy.