Flowering and Fruit Set of Pumpkin Cultivars under Field Conditions

Stapleton, Suzanne; Wien, H.C.; Morse, Roger A.

doi:10.21273/hortsci.35.6.1074

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…Overall, the study found that the natural cultivated populations of the three cucurbit species were dominated by staminate flowers in two species, which is in agreement with similar studies in other related cucurbit species 13, 14 . Among the three cucurbit species, bitter gourd produced maximum staminate flowers; an average of about 98% of the flowers produced per field was staminate.…”

supporting

confidence: 90%

Flower Sex Expression in Cucurbit Crops of Kerala: Implications for Pollination and Fruitset

Anusree¹,

Abhina²,

Lishiba³

et al. 2015

Current Science

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Cucurbits are monoecious in general; the female flowers occur lower than the male flowers in fields. Often farmers are not aware of this type of sex expression, and are concerned about the low fruit set despite 'profuse' flowering and abundant pollinators in the crop fields. We assessed flower sex expression during the peak (female) flowering and fruiting period in three widely grown cucurbit crops, Cucurbita maxima, Benincasa hispida and Momordica charantia in a village ecosystem of northern Kerala. Sex expression was male-biased in two species. In M. charantia, 97.65% of the flowers produced were staminate. In this condition, the farmers should ensure that effective pollinators are available in plenty to achieve maximum fruit set from the low number of pistillate flowers. C. maxima produced an average of 75.39% of staminate flowers, which varied across the fields; three fields consistently produced 100% pistillate flowers in all the 14 days of observations. The fruit set in fields with only pistillate flowers is likely to be affected by pollen limitation, rather than pollinator limitation. These fields may require supplementary manual pollination to enhance the fruit set. B. hispida produced more or less equal proportion of staminate and pistillate flowers across the fields and days studied. This kind of information may help the farmers to manage pollination services in their fields as well as to predict a realistic yield.

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supporting

confidence: 90%

Flower Sex Expression in Cucurbit Crops of Kerala: Implications for Pollination and Fruitset

Anusree¹,

Abhina²,

Lishiba³

et al. 2015

Current Science

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“…Adequate pollinator visitation may be needed to maintain crop yield in butternut squash as has been found in other cucurbits such as cucumber (Gingras et al, 1999;Stanghellini et al, 1997), watermelon (Adlerz, 1966;Kremen et al, 2002;Stanghellini et al, 1997), zucchini (Stephenson, 1981;Stephenson et al, 1988;Winsor et al, 1987), and pumpkin (Walters and Taylor, 2006). Fruit set was relatively low in this study (42 of 123 plants produced fruit as compared with 50% and 75% fruit set in a field study with C. pepo; Stapleton et al, 2000). It seems unlikely that our pollen amounts contributed to the low fruit set, because all treatments but the lowest amount produced equivalent fruit set.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 49%

“…We also note that in the field, the congener C. pepo (pumpkin) produced an average of only 3.4 and 5.4 female flowers per year across a 2-year study (Stapleton et al, 2000), and potted butternut in the greenhouse produced 4.4 + 0.52 female flowers over a 3-month period (n = 15; Hladun, unpublished data). Thus, low female flower and fruit production is not unusual.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Effects of Perimeter Trap Crop Pollen on Reproduction in Butternut Squash (Cucurbita moschata)

Hladun¹,

Adler²

2008

horts

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Perimeter trap cropping (PTC) uses an attractive crop to concentrate pests at borders and reduce pesticide use while maintaining yield. A possible disadvantage of PTC could be pollen flow between border and main crops that are not interfertile. The effects of pollen composition and amount on seed and fruit production were investigated between a main crop species, butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata Duch. ex Poir), and a PTC species, blue hubbard (C. maxima Duch.). Butternut squash plants were hand pollinated in the greenhouse with three pollen composition treatments crossed with four pollen amounts. Pure butternut squash pollen and mixed pollen produced more seeds per fruit and heavier seeds than pure blue hubbard pollen, revealing some incompatibility between butternut and blue hubbard. Saturating pollen amounts produced up to six times more seeds than lower pollen amounts. Pollen composition did not influence fruit set or fruit weight, which are of central importance for crop yield. This study suggests that pollen flow between blue hubbard borders and butternut squash should not interfere with crop production as long as sufficient conspecific pollen is deposited on stigmas.

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“…Fluctuations in fruit set in the cultivars with small fruits were relatively low (low CV), although fast-growing fruits were always present. Cultivars with small fruits producing higher numbers of fruits than cultivars with large fruits were also observed in cucumber (Jasso-Chaverria et al, 2005) and pumpkin (Stapleton et al, 2000). The larger fruit weight in cultivars with large fruits was not primarily caused by a difference in fruit growth duration, because this was small compared with the differences in fruit weight (Table 3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Just a few examples of detailed patterns of fruit set within the plant are given, e.g., cucumber (Marcelis, 1992), Salomon's seal (Guitián et al, 2001), and maize (Reed and Singletary, 1989). Cultivar comparisons in fruit set are more abundant, e.g., pumpkin (Stapleton et al, 2000), apricots (Alburquerque et al, 2002), grapevine (Lebon et al, 2004), and eggplant (Passam and Khah, 1992). Egli and Bruening (2006) compared detailed fruit set patterns between two soybean cultivars.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fruit Set and Yield Patterns in Six Capsicum Cultivars

Wubs

Ma²,

Hemerik

et al. 2009

horts

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Fruit set and yield patterns were studied in detail in six pepper cultivars. Fruit set differed largely between the cultivars: cultivars with small fruits (fruit fresh weight 20 to 40 g) showed higher fruit set (≈50%) than cultivars with large fruits (fruit fresh weight 120 to 200 g; 11% to 19%). The former showed continuous fruit set (four to five fruits/plant/week), whereas the latter showed fluctuations in fruit set. Fluctuations in weekly fruit set, expressed as the ratio between standard deviation of weekly fruit set and the mean of weekly fruit set (cv), were much lower for the cultivars with small fruits (0.44 to 0.49) than for the cultivars with large fruits (1.1 to 1.6). Fluctuations in weekly fruit yield varied between 0.51 and 0.77 for cultivars with small fruits and between 1.04 and 1.45 for cultivars with large fruits. Fluctuations in fruit yield were significantly positively correlated (Pearson R = 0.87) with fluctuations in fruit set. The correlation between fruit set and fruit yield patterns was highest with a lag time of 8 weeks for the cultivars with small fruits and 9 to 10 weeks for the cultivars with large fruits. This corresponds with the expected lag time based on the average fruit growth duration. The cultivars produced the same amount of biomass, implying that source strength was more or less similar. Hence, differences in fruit set and fruit yield patterns between the cultivars were not the result of differences in source strength and must therefore be related to differences in sink strength.

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Flowering and Fruit Set of Pumpkin Cultivars under Field Conditions

Cited by 15 publications

References 7 publications

Flower Sex Expression in Cucurbit Crops of Kerala: Implications for Pollination and Fruitset

Flower Sex Expression in Cucurbit Crops of Kerala: Implications for Pollination and Fruitset

Effects of Perimeter Trap Crop Pollen on Reproduction in Butternut Squash (Cucurbita moschata)

Fruit Set and Yield Patterns in Six Capsicum Cultivars

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