ABSTRACT
Planting of fruit trees rather at closer spacing than the recommended one within unit land area, using certain special techniques with the sole objective of obtaining maximum crop yield per unit area without sacrificing quality is often referred as “high density planting.” In high density planting (HDP) trees are planted very close together. Plant density may varies with the region, species to be grown, crop variety, rootstock used, cost of planting material, labor charges, assumed return from the orchard and techniques adopted for different horticultural operations for a crop. During last four decades, the importance of high density planting for higher productivity of fruit crops have been realized and now it has become one of the most successful tools of the Hi-Tech horticulture ensuring efficient use of land, water, nutrients and solar radiation with higher production per unit area. HDP offers early cropping and higher yields, improved fruit quality, reduced labor costs, enhanced mechanization in production with efficient use of different production resources leading to higher income per unit area. It can be achieved by the use of dwarfing rootstocks and genetically dwarf 254cultivars available in different crops, proper and timely use of growth retardants and mechanical methods for plant size control along with using incompatible rootstocks according to the situation. The various researches carried out in different parts of the country it has been found that under HDP of mango 1600 plants/ha, in guava 2222 plants/ha, in citrus up to 3000 plants/ha, in papaya 6400 plants/ha, in banana 4500 to 7000 plants/ha and in ultra-high density guava 5000 plants/ha were found beneficial for getting higher yield with good returns.
