Department of Horticulture, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology Pantnagar 263 145, Nainital.
* Department of Plant Physiology, Studies on Sex Expression in Papaya 339.
Application of phenolics was found to affect the sex expression in papaya. The highest number of female plants was observed in 5 X 10−4 M chlorogenic acid (59.8 per cent) followed by pyrogallic acid (57.5 per cent) as against control (36 per cent). The results have shown that hydroxylation on the aromatic ring has no role in deciding the efficiency of the compound. The phenolic extracts of the test plants were subjected to high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and eleven compounds were identified of which hydroquinone, protocatechuic acid, catechol, caffeic acid and p-coumaric acid were found to be the major phenolics.
