Department of Fruit Crops, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore - 641003, India.
Potassium appears to have profound influence on fruit quality through its influence on size, appearance, colour, soluble solids, acidity and vitamin contents. Potassium deficiency in fruits is often observed even in K-rich soils. Fruits like banana, grapes, peach and passion fruit have high potassium requirement. Although potassium does not form part of the structure of plant constituents, it regulates many vital functions like carbon assimilation, translocation of proteins and sugars, water balance in plants, maintaining turgor pressure in the cell, root development, improving quality of the fruits by maintaining desirable sugar to acid ratio, ripening of fruit and many other processes. Thus, it is the most important nutrient regulating the quality of fruits. Potassium is involved in many aspects of plant physiology viz., activation of more than 60 enzymes, aiding in photosynthesis, favouring high energy status, regulation of stomata opening etc. With the changing cropping pattern, need for potassium nutrition has become pertinent to obtain high yield of quality fruits. In this review paper role of potassium on various physiological processes in improving the yield and quality of major fruit crops has been discussed.
