Strategic pruning for manipulation of cropping cycles to maximize off season yield in guava (Psidium guajava L.) cv. Lalit

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) is a wonderful fruit crop responding incredibly well to pruning practices, so pruning is an essential management tool to regulate crop load, manipulate flowering, and improve fruit yield and quality. The current study was planned to assess the impact of different pruning times on growth, blooming, fruiting cycles and qualitative attributes of guava. In this experiment, the pruning operations were performed on 15th April, 30th May, 15th July, 30th August, 15th October and 30th November on the guava cv. Lalit. The results proclaimed that pruning executed on May 30th outperformed the other treatments regarding vegetative growth characteristics such as number of new shoots per branch, minimum days to bud appearance, bud swell, and bud burst. In contrast, the reproductive growth characteristics of guava, including the shortest period to flower bud initiation, 50% flower opening, full bloom, and fruit set, maximum fruit number and yield per plant have all been enhanced following the 30th May pruning. However, the time of pruning had a substantial impact on the quality attributes of guava, trees pruned on 30th May had the highest level of these variables and yielded fruits of relatively superior quality with maximum total sugars, TSS and minimum titratable acidity. A major challange in the study was variation in climatic conditions which affect the plant response to pruning treatments. This study contributes to demonstration of effective pruning techniques which manipulate guava cropping cycles to enhance off-season yield. It provides practical pruning schedules for farmers on optimizing pruning intensity and timing to achieve better fruit availability during market-scarce periods.