New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science abstracts
H00015Received 19 June 2000; accepted 16 October 2000
Influence of honey bee (Apis mellifera) on kiwifruit pollination and
fruit quality under Australian conditions
D. HOWPAGE
R. N. SPOONER-HART
Centre for Horticulture & Plant Sciences
University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury
Locked Bag 1, Richmond
NSW 2753, Australia
email: d.howpage@uws.edu.au
V. VITHANAGE
CSIRO Plant Industry
Horticulture Research Unit
506 Carmody Rd, St Lucia
Q 4067, Australia
Abstract The influence of honey bee (
Apis mellifera
L.) pollination of kiwifruit (
Actinidia deliciosa (A.Chev.) C.F. Liang
et A.R. Ferguson)
under different pollination regimes (viz. honey bee
supplementation, honey bee saturation in a cage with a single male cultivar,
and honey bee exclusion) was investigated under Australian conditions during
1993/94 and 1995/96 seasons. Vines that had no access to honey bees had
significantly (
P<=0.01) lower fruit set (24%) compared to honey bee
supplementation (91%) and bee saturation (89%). The mean yield (kg/vine) and
the mean number of fruit/vine in bee-supplemented and bee-saturated treatments
did not differ significantly, although vines that were excluded from honey bees
produced significantly (
P<= 0.01) lower yields. However, individual
fruit weight in the bee-saturated treatments was affected. There were
significantly more small fruit in bee-saturated vines than in vines that were
supplementary pollinated by honey bees. Bee activity as assessed by the number
of bee visits on flowers (bees/vine per min) was significantly higher on male
vines than female vines during the first 2 weeks of the flowering period. Honey
bees were the main contributor to pollination and fruit set, although low
numbers of other potential insect pollinators such as ladybird beetles and
hover flies were also observed. The mean seed numbers in comparable fruit from
higher weight groupings (i.e., 70-89, 90-109, and >=110 g) in
bee-supplemented and bee-saturated vines did not differ significantly,
suggesting adequate pollination and fertilisation of ovules in these two
treatments. Vines that were caged with a single male cultivar produced fruit
with significantly higher (
P<=0.01) total soluble solids
concentration than did those that were honey bee supplemented. Possible reasons
for the reduced mean fruit weight under honey bee saturation are discussed.
Keywords kiwifruit; Actinidia deliciosa; honey bees;
pollination; fruit quality; pollen parents
New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 2001, Vol. 29:
51-60
0014-0671/00/2901-0051 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2001
PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (717K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)
This year's abstracts |
Journal home page |
All abstracts |
Publishing home page
