Effect of Antioxidants to Control Browning in Guava Soft Wood Cuttings

Guava is the Apple of tropics and becoming the popular fruit of Pakistan. Guava is a nutraceutical fruit enriched with important minerals and vitamins like ascorbic acid. To overcome upon the issue of brown spots on fruit rind of guava soft wood cuttings, a research trial is executed. /the experiment was planned to overcome the problem of brown spots on fruit rind in soft wood cuttings of guava. For this purpose antioxidants i.e Vitamin C and L-ascorbate were used as blend mixture with IBA (rooting hormone) used for the initiation of roots in cuttings. A research trial was performed by employing randomized complete block design having three replications including frour treatments. Data subjected to result interpretation revealed that there is success (92.28%) and survival percentage (42.06%) was found maximum in T3 wherease, IBA 0.4% was used in combination with 1.5% citric acid and 1.5% ascorbic acid. In case of vegetative parameters maximum plant height (24.06 cm), number of leaves (25.50), leaf area (51.43mm), number of branches (3.68) and branch length (12.69 cm) were observed in T3 as compared to other treatments. The highest values for root parameters like primary roots (21.17), secondary roots (45.94), root volume (2.26 cm3) and root length (9.65 cm) were found in treatment 3 while lowest values for all treatments were observed in control.