Abstract
A common feature of eggplant is its heterostyly. Long-style flowers bear fruits whereas short style ones fail to do so. Heterostyly is influenced by some factors such as genotype, climatic conditions and fruit load. In this study three eggplant cultivars from Iran were cultivated under greenhouse condition. The influence of presence of fruit (two fruits and four fruits) or absence of that on style length and some other flower morphological was studied in three positions of single, basal and additional. The presence of fruit, specially four fruits reduced style length, stigma width as well as mass of flower, pistil and stigma compared to the control in all times during fruit growth, and after fruit harvest they increased again. Fruit load didn’t affect the number of stamen and stamen length. These effects were observed in all three positons of single, basal and additional flowers of all three cultivars. Generally this study showed that fruit load has decreasing effect on style length and size of flowers forming after fruit setting, which reversed after fruit harvesting.
Highlights
Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) from the Solanaceae family, is belonging to tropical and subtropical regions (San José et al, 2016)
Eggplant flowers are classified into the three groups of long style, medium style, and short style flowers based on the style length relative to that of the stamen (Prakash, 1968; Rylski et al, 1984; Handique & Sarma, 1995; Prasad & Sękara & Bieniasz, 2008)
Style length plays an important role in the fruit set of eggplant since pollen liberated from pores at the apex of the anther cone thereby promoting the fertilization of long-styled pistils (Rylski et al, 1984; Passam & Bolmatis, 1997)
Summary
Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) from the Solanaceae family, is belonging to tropical and subtropical regions (San José et al, 2016). Flowering and fruit setting are the most important factors in determining the yield of eggplant that is influenced by the genotype, the environmental conditions, the flower’s position on the plant and fruit load (Mohideen et al, 1977; Nothmann et al, 1983; Sun et al, 1990; Kowalska, 2003, 2006; Banik et al, 2018). Heterostyly in eggplant flowers is a varietal characteristic (Rylski et al, 1984; Kowalska, 2006; Sękara & Bieniasz, 2008), it is affected by such factors as plant age, fruiting dynamics, and environmental conditions (Lenz, 1970; Sun et al, 1990). Some researchers have shown that treatment of seeds with gamma rays caused a change in heterostyly by increasing the the effect of fruit load on style length of some cultivars has previously been studied by some researchers (Khah et al, 2000; Passam et al, 2001), in the present paper we studied this effect on style length and some other flower morphological traits in all three positions of single, basal and additional flowers of three eggplant cultivars from Iran
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