What to Do About Deformed Eggplant Fruit? A Detailed Guide to Prevention and Control

Eggplant, also known as “qie” and by the alternate name “luosu”, is one of the few purple vegetables and a very common home-style vegetable on the dining table. In parts of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui it is called luosu, while in Guangdong and Guangxi it is called aigua. It is an annual herbaceous plant of the genus Solanum in the nightshade family, and perennial in the tropics. The fruit it produces is edible, mostly purple or purplish-black in color, though there are also light green or white varieties, and in shape there are round, oval, pear-shaped and various other forms. Eggplant is a typical vegetable, and depending on the variety it has many uses. Eggplant has fairly high value for recovery from illness, and falls within the effective range for improving vitality.

The culinary value of eggplant

Eggplant can be eaten with meat or vegetables, and can be stir-fried, braised, steamed or boiled, as well as deep-fried, served cold with dressing, or made into soup. It is best not to peel eggplant when eating it, because the skin contains vitamin B, and vitamin B and vitamin C are a good pair; the metabolism of vitamin C requires the support of vitamin B, so eating eggplant with the skin helps promote the absorption of vitamin C.

Eaten together with bitter melon, bitter melon has the effects of relieving fatigue, clearing the heart and brightening the eyes, tonifying qi and strengthening yang, and delaying aging. Eggplant has the effects of relieving pain and invigorating blood, clearing heat and reducing swelling, relieving pain and promoting urination, as well as preventing blood vessel rupture, stabilizing blood pressure and stopping coughing up blood. Eaten together, the two make an ideal dish for people with cardiovascular disease. To prevent purpura, eating it with meat can nourish the blood, stabilize blood pressure and also prevent purpura.

The medicinal value of eggplant

Traditional Chinese medicine holds that eggplant is a cold and cooling food. Therefore, eating it in summer helps clear heat and relieve summerheat, and it is especially suitable for people prone to prickly heat and boils. People with indigestion who are prone to diarrhea should not eat much of it, just as Li Shizhen said in the Compendium of Materia Medica: “Eggplant is cold and laxative in nature; eating much of it will surely cause abdominal pain and diarrhea.” The Materia Medica of Southern Yunnan records that eggplant can disperse blood, reduce swelling and relax the intestines. Therefore, for people with dry bound stool, bleeding hemorrhoids or damp-heat jaundice, eating more eggplant is also helpful, and purple eggplant can be chosen to cook as porridge with rice. The Compendium of Materia Medica describes roasting eggplant with its stem, grinding it into a fine powder and taking it mixed with wine to treat intestinal-wind bloody stool; the Materia Medica of Southern Yunnan advocates taking it mixed with rice broth, which is more appropriate, because for intestinal-wind bloody stool and bleeding hemorrhoids, wine is unsuitable. Roasting eggplant with its stem and grinding it into a fine powder is more often used externally. In addition, the skin of eggplant contains B-group vitamins, and B-group vitamins can help the metabolism of vitamin C. Research has found that eggplant skin has the strongest anticancer activity, its potency even exceeding that of the anticancer drug interferon.

What to do about deformed eggplant fruit?

In eggplant cultivation, owing to the limitations of environmental conditions and inappropriate techniques, deformed fruit is very easily formed, causing reduced yield and income. Its main causes are the following aspects.

1. Treating flowers with hormones at an inaccurate time forms stiff fruit. The best time to treat flowers with hormones is only 3 days, namely the day of flowering and the 2 days before opening; treating too early easily forms stiff eggplant. Countermeasure: when eggplant flowers all turn purple until they open, a total of 3 days, hormones can be used for treatment, but treatment on the day of opening is best.

2. Too high a hormone concentration easily forms deformed fruit. Countermeasure: when treating flowers with hormones the concentration is generally required to be 0.003%, but it should be handled flexibly, that is, slightly weaker when the temperature is high and slightly stronger when the temperature is low. When the outside temperature is below 15°C, a concentration of 0.004%-0.005% is suitable.

3. Flowers that open on relatively weak plants have thin flower stalks and small, lean flowers, and even if treated with hormones they will form stiff fruit. Countermeasure: when transplanting, discard small seedlings and stiff seedlings and choose strong seedlings. Remove the flowers of the first eggplant, artificially extend the growth period, and at the same time apply more fertilizer to promote roots and strengthen the seedlings; for the fruit set later, carry out fruit-limiting management according to the plant's growth condition.

4. Flowers that open on over-luxuriant, leggy plants will also form deformed fruit even if treated with hormones. Because vegetative growth is too vigorous, the nutrients made by the leaves are competed for by the stems and leaves, inhibiting reproductive growth. Countermeasure: at the time before the first eggplant's eye-opening, carry out timely seedling restraint; during the restraint period appropriately control water and fertilizer, and cultivate and loosen the soil, so that vegetative growth shifts in time to reproductive growth. Spraying brassinolide can also balance the vegetative growth and reproductive growth of eggplant.

5. Treating flowers with hormones under high-temperature conditions easily forms deformed fruit. Countermeasure: when the temperature exceeds 30°C, stop treating flowers; for flowers opening that day, be sure to finish treatment in the morning when the temperature is below 30°C; for purple-turning flowers that have not yet opened, if treatment cannot be finished before 10 a.m., it can be continued after 4 p.m.