Effects of Pollinizer Cultivars, Times of Pollen Collection and Hand Pollination on Persimmon Fruit Quality cv. ‘HYAKUME’

Abstract

Hand pollination in persimmon cv. Hyakume was carried out to enhance completely no astringent as sweet fruit, using pollens of Hongmei (HM) and Doipui (DP) that were collected at 6:00 and 7:00 a.m., and hand pollinations were performed at 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. at Doipui research station, Chiangmai province. It was found that hand pollination with HM pollens had the highest fruit height, fruit firmness, and total soluble solids (TSS) as 7.98 cm, 2.24 kg/cm², and 13.73 ⁰brix, respectively. At the same time, the pollens of DP had the highest weight of brown pulp as 199.89 gram/fruit. Particularly, the flowers that were pollinated at 9:00 a.m. had the highest weight of brown fruit pulp as 196.34 g/fruit. In addition, fruit weight, fruit width, fruit length, seed number, and seed weight were not significantly different in all treatments. Interaction of varieties of male flower, times of pollen collection, and times of hand pollination revealed that HM pollens that were collected at 7:00 a.m. had the highest fruit firmness as 2.33 kg/cm² and hand pollination with HM pollens at 9:00 a.m. had highest TSS as 14.04 ⁰Brix. This study suggested that HM pollens were suitable for pollinating, collected at 7:00 a.m., and pollinated at 9:00 a.m. to produce the Hyakume variety as good fruit quality for non-astringent sale.