Custard apple sitaphal fruit set hand pollination fruit drop management Maharashtra Balanagar
How do I improve fruit set and reduce fruit drop in custard apple (sitaphal)?
NNamdev Kale7mo ago · 241 views
7 Answers
🌾Farmer.in Krishi TeamExpert ✓7mo ago
Custard apple often sets poorly because its flowers are difficult for insects to pollinate, leading to lopsided or dropped fruit. Keeping soil moisture steady during flowering and fruit set, balanced nutrition, and avoiding stress all help retention, and removing weak or excess fruitlets lets the plant carry the rest well. In some commercial orchards growers do hand pollination by collecting pollen from freshly opened male-stage flowers and applying it to receptive female-stage flowers in the evening or early morning, which greatly improves set and fruit shape. This is labour intensive but worthwhile for quality varieties. For the hand pollination method and timing for your variety, confirm with your local KVK or horticulture department.
NNamdev Kale7mo ago
Hand pollination sounds like a lot of work but on our Balanagar trees it gave bigger, more even fruit and far less lopsided ones. We do it for the best plots only.
DDattatraya Munde7mo ago
We collect the pollen in the evening from the flowers that are in the male stage and apply it the same evening or next morning to the receptive female-stage flowers, because the timing of the flower stages is the whole trick. A small soft brush works for the application. Getting the stage right was where we struggled at first, so we asked the KVK to show us once and after that it was easy.
SSakharam Pawar7mo ago
Even without full hand pollination, just keeping the soil moisture steady during flowering helped our retention, because in our dry Beed conditions the stress was causing the fruitlets to drop. We give light irrigation through the flowering and early fruit stage and do not let the trees go thirsty then. Removing the weak excess fruitlets early also let the trees fill the remaining fruit better.
MMangal Pawar7mo ago
We do the hand pollination on the best plots only because it is labour heavy, but the bigger and more even fruit easily paid for the work. Getting the male and female flower stages right was the hard part at first. We asked the KVK to demonstrate once and after that the labour managed it well.
BBhaskar Munde6mo ago
Removing the weak and excess fruitlets early let the trees fill the remaining fruit much better in our dry Beed conditions. A tree carrying too many small lopsided fruitlets just drops most of them anyway. Thinning to a sensible load gave us fewer but far better fruit.
KKavita Kale6mo ago
Steady soil moisture through flowering and early fruit set was half the battle for us, because stress was making the fruitlets drop before they could hold. We give light frequent irrigation then and do not let the trees go thirsty. Mulching the basin helped hold that moisture in the heat.