Impact of Precision Farming on Shelf Life and Organoleptic Evaluation of Banana (Musa paradisiaca L.) cv. Rajapuri

Abstract

Consumers choose the fruits that look good, firm and offer good flavour and have nutritive value. Producers and handlers are first concerned with appearance and textural quality along with long post harvest shelf life. Present experiment was undertaken at ICAR-AICRP on Fruits, Kittur Rani Channamma College of Horticulture, Arabhavi to know the impact of precision farming on shelf life and organoleptic evaluation of banana cv. Rajapuri during 2019-20 and 2020-21 in the laboratory, Department of Fruit Science, KRC College of Horticulture, Arabhavi, Karnataka (India). The experiment was carried out in Randomized Complete Block Design with thirteen treatments and three replications. Among all the treatments, application of 100 per cent RDF through fertigation at weekly intervals along with polythene mulching with foliar spray of micronutrient mixture and bunch nutrition recorded the highest shelf life (10.00 days) and the least physiological loss in weight (8.45 %). The analyzed results for overall acceptability were in higher preference level in T5, T7 and T9 (9.00) while minimum was noticed in T13 (7.00).