The effect of pollenizer on the fruit set of plum cultivar Cacanska Najbolja

Abstract

In this paper, during a 4-year period (2003-2006) effects of six pollenizers (President, Italian Prune, Stanley, Cacanska Rodna, Agen 707, and California Blue) on the degree of fruit set in the plum cultivar Cacanska Najbolja were examined. Besides the controlled pollination of this cultivar, open pollination was investigated. Functional pollen ability in pollenizer-cultivars was established by in vitro pollen germination. Degree of fruit set was determined comparing the number of fruit set (10 days after pollination, 21 days after pollination and number of harvested fruits) against the number of pollinated flowers. The results indicated that all pollenizer cultivars, studied in this paper, possessed satisfactory in vitro pollen germination (30.1-67.4%). The number of fruit set determined 10 days after pollination was very high and did not differ among pollenizers. Highly significant differences were found between the pollenizers in the number of fruit set 21 days after pollination and significant ones in relation to the number of harvested fruits. Compared to open pollination, higher number of fruit set 21 days after pollination and higher number of harvested fruits were obtained when cultivars Stanley (17.0%; 7.6%) and Italian Prune (14.6%; 6.9%) were used as pollenizers, therefore those cultivars are recommendable as good pollenizers for the cultivar Cacanska Najbolja.