How to Hand-Pollinate Dragon Fruit? A Detailed Guide to the Latest Method

Dragon fruit is very popular in our daily lives. So nowadays more and more people are growing it in our country. When growing dragon fruit, if you let it pollinate naturally, then its pollination and fertilization rate will be relatively low, and it will also affect the yield of dragon fruit. Therefore, we need to carry out hand pollination. So how should dragon fruit be hand-pollinated? Below, let's take a look at the hand pollination method for dragon fruit together with the editor!

1. Why hand pollination is needed

Under normal circumstances, the stamens and style of dragon fruit flowers appear equal in length or short. For example, the stamens may be about 4 cm shorter than the stigma, so if self-pollination occurs, the success rate is very low. Moreover, dragon fruit is a plant that blooms at night, and the flowers wither after being exposed to sunlight, while at night there are basically no insects to help with pollination. If red-fleshed dragon fruit is grown, then self-incompatibility is very likely to occur, and the self-pollination rate will not exceed 1/10. Finally, if it is grown in a solar greenhouse, pollination is also very difficult because of the wind.

When hand-pollinating, we should pay attention to judging the pollination time according to the flowering pattern of dragon fruit. Dragon fruit generally blooms at night, and the flowering time is not long, basically only about one night. Therefore, the time for hand pollination of dragon fruit should be from the evening when the flowers open until the morning when the flowers gradually close. It is best to pollinate at one in the morning, because at this time the flower diameter of dragon fruit flowers is the largest, and the pollination success rate is also the highest. However, because it is at night, hand pollination is still somewhat inconvenient to carry out.

3. Pollination method

The pollination method can use the simplest brush-touch method. Because dragon fruit flowers are relatively large, and each flower has relatively a lot of pollen, collecting the pollen is also very simple. However, note that the vitality of the pollen is relatively poor, and under normal temperature conditions, its survival time is generally not very long. Therefore, when hand-pollinating, it is best to use the pollen immediately after collecting it, to ensure the pollen's vitality and pollination effect. After the pollen is collected, directly dip a brush into the pollen, then evenly apply it to the stigma.

4. Precautions

If dragon fruit varieties are different, then the genetic differences between them will also be very large, and the pollination rate will also be higher. So when growing dragon fruit, we can appropriately interplant some different varieties of dragon fruit. In particular, red-fleshed and white-fleshed varieties can be mixed, and the fruit-setting rate can be effectively increased. Then when hand-pollinating, we should also pay attention to the amount of pollen applied to the stigma. The more pollen on the stigma, the larger the dragon fruit will be, so everyone should also pay attention to controlling the amount of pollen when pollinating.

The above is a brief introduction to the hand pollination method for dragon fruit. That is all for today's introduction. This article is for reference only, and I hope it can help everyone!