Response of mango malformation to stage and severity of pruning of shoot bearing malformed panicles

An experiment was formulated to examine the efficacy of different levels of pruning of shoot bearing malformed panicles on the floral malformation in ‘Dashehari ’mango at two distinct stages of panicle emergence. Pruning of newly emerged panicles has pronounced effect in reducing the incidence of malformation. Delay in pruning of fully emerged panicles gave less satisfactory results. Among shoot pruning treatments applied at different stages of panicle emergence, malformation was significantly most suppressed with 20 cm shoot pruning applied at early stage of newly emerged panicle followed by 25 cm shoot pruning and 15 cm shoot pruning. Light pruning treatments (5 cm) applied to trees at both the stages did not affect malformation significantly and were at par with unpruned trees.