Abstract
Monsoon rains at the time of harvesting / ripening cause heavy losses to date fruit crop. The objective of current study was to
investigate the potential of ethephon on ripening acceleration and fruit quality of date palm. Ethephon was applied through
spray on fruit (2 ml, 4 ml and 6 ml/L) and by injection in fruit peduncle (1 ml, 2 ml and 3 ml/bunch) at final kimri stage of
both cultivars during two seasons (2011 and 2012). Spray method performed well as foliar application of ethephon @ 4 ml/L
reduced the fruit maturation period between kimri to rutab stage up to 14 days with uniform fruit ripening index of 61.21%
and rutab fruit yield of 6.32 kg per bunch as compared to untreated fruit. Biochemical parameters such as ascorbic acid (1.33
and 1.45 mg/100 g), glucose (23.79 and 22.85%), fructose (21.97 and 21.32%), sucrose (6.06 and 5.55%), total phenolics,
(155.55 and 161.90 mg GAE/100 g), total flavonoids (51.95 and 47.08 mg CEQ/100 g), total antioxidants (59.74 and
63.85%) were also higher in these fruits. Hillawi cultivar performed better by ethephon application as compared to
Khadrawi. It is concluded that losses of date fruit can be minimized by the application of ethephon at final kimri stage by
shortening the fruit transition period between final kimri and rutab stage with good biochemical composition.
