INVESTIGATION ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF FRUITING AND SEED DEVELOPMENT IN CHINESE JUJUBE (ZIZIPHUS JUJUBA MILL.)

Investigation of 175 Chinese jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.) cultivars showed that 87.9-99.9% flowers and 68.5% young fruits dropped off during development and finally the fruit set was only 1.1% on the basis of flower averagely.
The fruit number per 100 bearing branches varied from 4.26 to 175 among cultivars.
Only 8.5% of the cultivars could set more than one fruits per bearing branch.
It was seemed that fruit number was negatively correlated to fruit size among cultivars.
And, 87.8% of Chinese jujube cultivars can set fruits under self-pollination.
However, natural pollination could increase fruiting rate by 3.5-600% or even more.
Obvious difference was found among strains of cultivar ‘Jinsixiaozao’ in fruit set.
The seed percentages were less than 10% in 69.2% cultivars, and only 5.9% cultivars had seed percentage over 50%. Pollination was helpful to seed development.
Only 1% cultivars had seed rate over 10% under self-pollination while 30.8% cultivars had seed rate more than 10% under natural pollination.

I International Jujube Symposium

P. Liu, M.J. Liu, Z.H. Zhao, X.Y. Liu, J.R. Wang, C. Yan

Chinese jujube, fruit development, seed development

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.840.26