Studies on the Improvement of Date Palm Productivity Using Different Methods of Pollination and Fruit Thinning Levels

Abstract

Pollination and thinning are basic procedures of date palms in terms of their impact on fruit development, quality and yield, as well as the organization yearly tree bearing. The development of pollination technology, which leads to an acceptable level of fruit set with the use of small amount of pollen grains and without a further need for thinning, is necessary to improve the productivity of date palms, especially under arid conditions. This examination was done on Saidy date palm for both progressive seasons 2017 and 2018 at El-Kharga Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt. The impact of pollen grain suspension at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 g blended with starch 5.0 g, dust pollen at 10, 12.5 and 16.7% as well as fruit thinning at 10, 20 and 30% on fruit retained, fruit weight/bunch, yield and fruit quality were examined. The outcomes announced that utilization pollen grains suspension at 1.0 g + 5.0 g starch and dusting at 10% as well as the fruit thinning at 30% had a decrement level of fruit weight/bunch about 9.64, 9.99 and 9.64% compared to the traditional treatment, respectively. The most elevated estimations fruit weight (11.28, 11.44 and 11.22 g) were obtained from spraying pollen grains suspension at 0.5 g + 5.0 g starch, dusting at 10% and removing 30% of fruit, which led to 20.51, 22.22 and 19.87% increment over the traditional treatment as average of the two seasons, respectively. Likewise, utilizing pollen grains suspension at 0.5 g or pollen dusting at 10% and removing 30% of fruit gave the most elevated values of TSS and sugar contents, while, utilizing the traditional pollination gave the least values. We can conclude from that pollination by either pollen grains suspension at 1.0 g or dusting at 10% should be possible to acquire an extensive yield with great quality, increase the efficiency of the pollination process and combine the two methods of pollination and fruit thinning at the same time in their effect on the productivity of date palms.