Medicated Prickly Pear (Opuntia Ficus Indica)-The New Emerging Agricultural Crop in Arid and Semi Arid Regions of India.

ABSTRACT

The present investigation deals with the development of agro-techniques for Opuntia ficus indica (Prickly pear)-OFI cultivation. Standardization and development of best spacing for opuntia plantation, fertilization imposition to achieve good fruit and biomass yield and alternatively fruit quality and biomass parameters was observed and concluded as the better agro-technique among the all imposed treatments. The effect of different spacing and fertilizers composition treatment on cladode yield, fruit yield, harvesting index, stem area index (SAI), Total soluble solids (TSS), Titrable acidity and Ascorbic acid (Vit-C). Correlation studies of treatments revealed that all the six characters of cladode yield, harvest index, Stem area index, TSS, TA and Vit-C exhibited non significant, positive correlation with fruit yield.