INFLUENCE OF SOIL NUTRIENT STATUS ON YIELD AND QUALITATIVE ATTRIBUTES OF POMEGRANATE (Punica granatum L.) AND BER (Zizyphus mauritiana LAMK.)

Pomegranate and ber are important fruits find favour especially in arid/ semi-arid areas of tropics all across the globe. Bright sun-shine and light soil offer premium quality in harvest un matching to the harvest obtained from any where else in the world. However, the share of India in world trade is abysmally low. Quality of the produce matching to international standard is proved as the hard impediment in this regard. It is obvious that the quality of produce depends a lot upon the inherent fertility and productivity of soil. To have an account of all such factors study was undertaken selecting ten representative orchards of pomegranate cv. Ganesh and also of ber cv. Gola of Bikaner district and it was attempted to study the inherent nutrient status of orchards and its impact on physico- chemical characteristics of fruits. Soil samples were collected from each orchard from 0-60 cm soil depth. From the investigation it was found that the level of organic carbon, nitrogen, zinc, phosphorus and sulphur was low to medium and potassium content was in medium range in soils of selected sites in orchards in Bikaner district. All soil nutrients were found positively correlated with nutrient status of leaves, fruit yield and qualitative attributes of ber except phosphorous and zinc contents in leaves.