Fruit bagging for improving quality of rainy season guava under Punjab conditions

The rainy season crop of guava is severely infested by fruit fly and fetches lower economic returns. The farmers going in for rainy season crop have to use aggressive chemical measures, which may render serious health hazard to the consumers. In the present study, different bagging materials for guava fruits viz. non-woven bags of green, white, red and blue colour, leno bags, butter paper bags, perforated polythene bags and newspaper bags were put on immature green fruits at marble stage of development and evaluated for their efficacy to prevent fruit fly damage. The fruit size, weight, organoleptic rating and yield improved significantly in all the non-woven bagged fruits as compared to non-bagged fruits. The fruit bagging especially in non-woven bags eliminated the incidence of fruit fly infestation. Thus, 98–99 per cent fruits bagged in non-woven bags were healthy, free of fruit fly infestation and marketable while non-bagged fruits exhibited 100 per cent damage. Though, the effective yield obtained from blue and white non-woven bagged treatments was <12 kg but the white coloured bags proved to be the best in terms of fruit size, yield and quality. The benefit cost (B: C) ratio exhibited by newspaper bags was highest (2.11) because they were cheaper but were not very effective in controlling the fruit fly damage. The overall costs of the bagging treatments with non-woven white bags amounted to Rs 120 per 100 fruits which is affordable as the benefits are greater compared to non-bagged fruits which were unmarketable.