Artificial Pollination in Kiwifruit and Olive Trees

Abstract

In the last 10 years, kiwifruit vine artificial pollination became a widespread practice useful to increase fruit quality. Kiwifruit size is directly proportional to the number of seeds, i.e., to the number of fertilized ovaries. However, artificial pollination efficiency depends on many parameters such as pollen quality (germinability, humidity, and conservation), pollination system (dry or liquid), coadjuvants, and flowering stage. Those parameters were well defined in Actinidia in recent studies, however, they remain quite undefined for other anemophilous pollinated trees such as olive tree, hazelnut, pistachio, and palm. In these plants, the flowers are very small and extremely numerous, so the pollination was difficult to study. In addition, there are incompatibility factors (genetic and physic), long lap time from pollination to fertilization, and alternate bearing, lower economic gain for these fruits, low agronomic input, and low innovation level in the field. All these aspects had reduced the application of pollination technique for these cultivations. The experiences developed in kiwifruit lead to define a new model crop fruit set that could be applied to anemophilous pollinated plants such as olive tree, where the fruit set are lower than 2%. The first experiences have shown a great potential and have encouraged the development of this technique.