Rejuvenation of senile and overcrowded mango trees in orchard

The investigation on “Rejuvenation of senile and overcrowded mango trees in orchard” was carried out at Horticultural Research Centre, Pattharchatta under the Department of Horticulture of G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, District U.S. Nagar, Uttarakhand, India from 2000 to 2009 (continuously for 10 years). the selected trees were 58 years old and the experiment was laid out in randomized Block design (rBd). the treatment combinations were comprised of 4 pruning methods i.e. M₀: No pruning, M₁: Heading back secondary branches, M₂: Heading back upto tertiary branches, M₃: thinning up to crowded branches and centre open and 2 Paclobutrazol treatments namely P₀: without paclobutrazol and P₁: Standard dose of paclobutrazol. Every year the standard dose of paclobutrazol was given to trees in month of September by trunk Soil Line Pour Method (tSLP). the pooled data of 10 years (2000 to 2009) showed that various pruning levels and use of paclobutrazol exhibited significant effect on vegetative growth, yield and quality. The reduced tree height (6.45 m) and spread from East to west as well as North to South (7.69 m and 7.68 m, respectively) were observed with the “Heading back up to secondary branches with standard dose of paclobutrazol” (M₁P₁). Significantly higher fruit weight (326.56 g), fruit length (12.0 cm), pulp weight (237.22 g), fruit number tree⁻¹ (266.57), fruit yield tree⁻¹ (87.59 kg) and fruit yield ha⁻¹ (6044.09 kg) were found with the treatment of “thinning up to crowded branches & centre open and standard dose of paclobutrazol” (M₃P₁).