Improving the Red Color and Fruit Quality of ‘Kent’ Mango Fruit by Pruning and Preharvest Spraying of Prohydrojasmon or Abscisic Acid

Abstract

Pre-harvest application of prohydrojasmon (PDJ) or abscisic acid (ABA) induces the red color in fruits that were exposed to sunlight at the orchard. In this large-scale work, we evaluated the effect of two different pruning techniques of ‘Kent’ mango orchards, one leading to opening the orchard canopy to expose as much fruit as possible to sunlight, while the second pruning leads to square-shaped trees and subsequently reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the fruit. These two pruning methods were combined with preharvest spraying with prohydrojasmon (PDJ) or abscisic acid (ABA) using two different types of sprayers, i.e., regular and air-jet sprayer. Pruning the canopy of the orchards to open and closed trees exposed 80% or 30% of fruits to sunlight, respectively. Both of the application with air-jet and regular sprayers effectively covered the fruit without causing fruit detachment and damage to yield. Both the phytohormones (PDJ and ABA) application treatments induced red blush skin, red intensity, anthocyanin, and flavonoids, particularly in fruit grown outside the tree canopy in both open and closed trees. PDJ and ABA treatments exhibited marginally reduced acidity than the untreated control, while the brix was not affected much by any of the treatments. Besides these, exposure to sunlight and PDJ treatment also reduced postharvest decay and increased chlorophyll degradation and yellowing in comparison to the controls. This study promoted applicative evidence about the positive effects of exposure to sunlight, prohydrojasmon (PDJ), and abscisic acid (ABA) on red color development without compromising the mango fruit’s quality.