Effect of duration and type of bagging on fruit characteristics of date palm cv. Khastawi

Despite being historically renowned as a significant date producer, both the Arab world and Iraq have experienced a noticeable decline in date palm production in recent years. This decrease in output can be attributed to the sluggish integration of advanced techniques that could enhance and maintain high-quality yields. In this regard, an experiment was conducted at the Al-Rabee station on date palm cultivar Khastawi under the randomized complete blocks design with three replications, to study the effect of four treatments of bagging: B0 - Without bagging, B1 - Rocklin, B2- Agryl and B3 - Paper bags and four bagging periods: T0 – 0, T1 - 40, T2 – 50 and T3 - 60 days, and their interactions on the fruits characteristics of date palm cv. Khastawi. The results showed that T1B3 treatment gave the highest values in fruit set (86.55%), while T3B2 treatment was superior in respect to fruit weight (7.260g), seed weight (0.6300g), fresh weight (6.630g) and fruit diameter (1.8533cm). The lowest values of fruit characteristics were recorded in the control treatment. Therefore, we recommend using bagging fruits to improve fruit set, bunch yield and fruit quality.