Abstract
: Native of the Americas, pitaya is currently a fruit bearing plant in expansion in the domestic and international market and is an alternative source of revenue for small and large farmers. As some studies show the lack of efficiency of natural pollinators in fructification in pitaya, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of manual self-pollination and of manual cross pollination in Hylocereus undatus in two periods of pollination. The experiment was carried out in the orchard of the Universidade Federal de Lavras (Federal University of Lavras) in a completely randomized design with a 2 x 2 factorial arrangement (two types of pollination and two flowering periods) with 15 replications, with one flower per replication. The flowers were bagged, emasculated and pollinated manually. The percentage of fruit set , longitudinal and transversal diameter of the fruit, mass of the fruit, pulp and peel, thickness of the peel, soluble solids contents, pH, titratable acidity, ratio (soluble solids:titratable acidity), number of seeds per fruit and seed germination were evaluated. It may be concluded that pollination in red pitaya with its own pollen allows fructification. Flowers pollinated in Apr. result in fruit with physical characteristics superior to the fruit generated by pollination in Jan.
Highlights
Unknown 15 years ago, pitaya currently occupies a growing niche in the European exotic fruit market (MIZRAHI et al, 1997; IMBERT et al, 2001)
The fruit set was greatest through manual cross pollination, obtaining up to 93% fructification (Table 1)
Weiss et al (1994), studying breeding systems and type of pollination in Hylocereus undatus, obtained from 50% to 79.6% of fruit set in manually selfpollinated flowers
Summary
Unknown 15 years ago, pitaya (or dragon fruit) currently occupies a growing niche in the European exotic fruit market (MIZRAHI et al, 1997; IMBERT et al, 2001). The fruits of red pitaya is extremely red and attractive to consumers. It has a whitish pulp with an agreeable, slightly sweet flavor, and numerous tiny black-colored seeds (ANDRADE et al, 2005). (WEISS et al, 1994) due to the size of flowers and the arrangement of its parts (MERTEN, 2003). It has nocturnal anthesis with an approximate duration of 15 hours and it begins to close in the very early morning hours (MARQUES et al, 2011). The beginning of fruit development is observed, characterized by desiccation of the flower remains (MARQUES et al, 2011)
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