Pistillate Receptivity of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cv. Barhee

Abstract

Pollination in date palm is a necessary, laborious, and cost-involving operation for successful fruit set. However, if the pollination is unsuccessful, its fruits develop into parthenocarpic fruits which do not possess economic value. To reduce the effort, it is necessary to ascertain the duration of pistillate receptivity of the date palm for which an experiment was conducted at Date palm Research Station, Mundra, Kachchh, India, to understand the pistillate receptivity in date palm cv. Barhee. The experiment was conducted for 4 years (2014–2017), where pollination was done every day from 1 day to 10 days after anthesis (spathe opening) in randomly selected bunches which was replicated three times in randomized block design. The proportion of pollinated fruits among all the fruit present (including unpollinated parthenocarpic fruit) was observed and recorded along with their respective bunch weight. Higher proportion of pollinated fruits were observed when the female inflorescence pollinated in the first 4 days and higher bunch weight was observed in the first 2 days of pollination after spathe opening.