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.

A comparative study of pollination methods effect on the changes in fruit yield and quality of date palm cultivar Khalas

“…Dhakki. However, Samouni et al (2016) and Shaaban et al (2019) reported non-significant difference among different pollination methods regarding bunch weight. The reasons of difference between these two studies and present one regarding bunch weight could be because of the difference in cultivars and both former studies applied different percentage of pollen grain concentrations and starch levels that might negatively affect bunch weight.…”

“…Highest fruit weight and size was recorded in cv. Saidy when dusting and pollen suspension methods were applied (Shaaban et al, 2019) whereas highest seed weight, fruit length, width and weight was obtained in pollen dusting method (Ullah et al, 2018). Abu-Zahra and Shatnawi (2019) obtained higher fruit weight in cvs.…”

“…The decrease in fruit moisture content was also observed in cv. Saidy in dusting and pollen grains suspension methods, however, the pollination with these two methods enhanced the fruit chemical constituents such as total soluble solids and sugar contents (Shaaban et al, 2019). El-Mardi et al (1998) obtained higher nonreducing sugar when cv.…”

“…There was significantly higher percentage to fruit set in former technique. Shaaban et al (2019) reported that date palm cv. Saidy set highest fruit percentage (86.21%) when pollinated by hand followed by dusting (72.11%) and pollen grains suspension (62.76%) methods.…”

“…Dhakki regarding fruit set percentage, number of fruits per bunch and physical properties of fruit. Similarly, Shaaban et al (2019) concluded that pollination by either pollen grains suspension or dusting enhanced the yield and quality of date palm cv. Saidy.…”