An organic NLO material guanidinium L-monohydrogen tartrate (GuHT) was grown by the slow evaporation technique using water as a solvent. The solubility and meta stable zone width was determined. The GuHT crystal belongs to orthorhombic system with noncentrosymmetric space group P2(1)2(1)2(1). The morphology of the GuHT crystal was studied. The most prominent plane (0 0 1) was encouraged to grow in unidirection by Sankaranarayanan-Ramasamy (SR) method using water as a solvent. The growth conditions were optimized. The transparent Gut-IT single crystal of maximum width 15 mm and length 101 mm was obtained by employing SR method. The grown crystal was subjected to high resolution X-ray diffraction, UV-vis-NIR transmittance, refractive index, hardness, laser damage threshold and birefringence studies in different planes. The particle size dependent second harmonic generation efficiency for guanidinium L-monohydrogen tartrate was evaluated by Kurtz-Perry powder method using Nd:YAG laser, which established the existence of phase matching. The second harmonic generation (SHG) of GuHT crystal was investigated by the SHG Maker fringes technique. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.