Plum, pear, and apple manual pollination tutorial

General Fruit Growing
1

Hi all… Anyone know a good hand-pollination guide for plum, pear, and apples(plum is my priority esp now it’s flowering)? I’ve done this for durian and avocado … my questions are the following:

  1. when/what time does the pollen dehisce? (I.e. the best time for pollen collection).
  2. when is the best time to apply the collected pollen?

Tubig

2

The rule of thumb would be when the stigma is sticky. You will see it has a glossy look and will easily hold onto pollen when applied. It will look a little more mat before and after the prime receptive periods.

If you look at the anthers of the flowers you will often see that they don’t all open at exactly the same time even within the same flower. Just look for the flowers with the greatest amount of powdery pollen visible on the anthers to use as these will be right in the middle of their pollen release and should be very viable.

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3

Regarding time of day, generally mirror when the bees would be pollinating. In other words the flowers would ideally be relatively free of rain drops and the temps comfortably warm.

4

I ran across this reference which explains more cross pollination and fertilization details than any other reference I have located. I am interested in determining which of my stonefruits I can cross pollinate so I found this a good resource.
Dennis
Kent, wa
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45126132?seq=21

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