Abstract

Plant growth regulators are widely employed to secure good fruitset and development in many horticultural crops. They are now widely used in grape production for varied uses such as thinning of berries, improving the fruitset, hastening or delaying maturity of fruits (Weaver, 1956), increasing the size of berries (Weaver and Mc Cune, 1959 a), increasing the quality of berries (Weaver and Mc Cune 1959 a, b and c, Venkataratnam, 1964) and for inducing seedlessness in berries (Celestre, 1963, Blaha, 1963 and Coombe, 1965). The compounds of plant growth regulators like naphthalene com- pounds, phenoxy compounds and gibberellins are commercially used for such purposes. In India Krishnamurthi et al (1959) found the usefulness of gibberellic acid for improving the size and quality of Pusa Seedless variety of grape. In the light of the above findings, investigations were undertaken, to study the effect of plant growth regulators on some of the important varieties of grapes.

Keywords: