Articles
POLLINATION OF ACTINIDIA CHINENSIS PLANCH. IN CHINESE ORCHARDS
The experimental orchard was in Mingxi county, Fujian, and the pistillate clone was ‘Wuzhi n°3’ and the staminate clone ‘Chung-M-3’. Fruits from open-pollinated flowers were harvested over two years to determine the relationship between individual fruit weight and seed content.
Hand pollination tests were conducted to determine the minimum number of stigmas necessary to achieve full pollination, and measurements were taken on flower morphology.
Staminate flowers were smaller than pistillate ones, but they both contained an average of 58 stamens.
The pistillate flowers had an average of 37 stigmas, which was not significantly different from the values reported for A. deliciosa ‘Hayward’.
Fruit size at harvest was positively correlated with seed number and seed weight (r ≥ 0.77). The power model W = 
*S
where W is the individual fruit weight, S is the number of seeds per fruit, and and are constant parameters, gave the best fit to the data.
The parameters of this model suggested that the relationship between fruit weight and seed content was similar in the selected lines of A. chinensis ‘Whuzi n°3’ and A. deliciosa ‘Hayward’.
Hand-pollination of 1, 2, 3, and all stigmas resulted in fruits of 67, 87, 98, and 114 g, respectively.
When 3 stigmas were pollinated, fruit weight was not affected by the relative position of these stigmas in the flower.
Fruits from flowers of which all the stigmas had been hand-pollinated weighed up to 175 g, while fruits from open-pollinated flowers averaged only 66 g.
Adequate pollination is essential to produce large fruits in A. chinensis and poor pollen transfer hampered fruit development in our study orchard.
Further local studies relating pollination, the availability of effective pollinators, and orchard management are needed in order to achieve high yields of good caliber fruit.