How to hand-pollinate dragon fruit? Detailed methods and steps
Dragon fruit is very popular in our daily lives. So now more and more people are growing it in our country. When growing dragon fruit, if you let dragon fruit pollinate naturally, its pollination and fertilization rate will be relatively low, and it will also affect the yield of dragon fruit. Therefore, we need to do a good job of hand pollination. So how should dragon fruit be hand-pollinated? Let's take a look at the dragon fruit hand-pollination methods together with the editor below!
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 are 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; after exposure to sunlight, the flowers wither, and at night there are basically no insects to help with pollination. If you are growing red-fleshed dragon fruit, 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.
2. Pollination time
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 when the flowers open in the evening to when the flowers gradually close in the morning. It is best to pollinate at 1 a.m., 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 methods
The simplest brush-touch pollination method can be used. Because dragon fruit flowers are relatively large, and each flower has relatively a lot of pollen, collecting pollen is also very simple. However, note that the vitality of the pollen is relatively poor, and under normal temperature conditions, the survival time is generally not very long. Therefore, when carrying out hand pollination, it is best to use the pollen immediately after collecting it, to ensure the vitality of the pollen and the pollination effect. After the pollen is collected, directly dip a brush into the pollen, and then spread it evenly on the stigma.
4. Precautions
If the 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 dragon fruit of different varieties. In particular, red-fleshed and white-fleshed varieties can be mixed and planted, which can effectively increase the fruiting rate. 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 dragon fruit hand-pollination methods. That is all for today's introduction. This article is for reference only, and I hope it can help everyone!