ROLE OF FLOWER VISITORS IN POLLINATION AND SEED SET OF MUSTARD [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern Coss]
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Date
2015-07-10
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UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES GKVK, BENGALURU
Abstract
Pollinators play an important role in seed set of mustard. Floral biology, flower
visitors, foraging behaviour of efficient pollinators and their role in seed set were studied.
Mustard produced perfect flowers. Flowers opened 34 and 42 days after sowing in Kharif
and Rabi seasons. Longevity of the flowers was one day. Maximum flowers opened
between 07.30-08.00 h and 08.00-08.30 h. in Kharif and Rabi seasons, respectively.
Anther dehiscence occurred 30 minutes after anthesis. Pollen viability and stigma
receptivity was maximum between10.00-11.00 and 11.00-12.00 h. Seventeen species of
insects belonging to Hymenoptera (82.35 %), Lepidoptera (11.76 %) and Diptera (5.88
%) visited mustard flowers. Pollinator activity was maximum between 09.00-11.00 h in
both seasons. Major flower visitors included two species of honey bees viz., Apis florea
and Apis cerana. Though A. florea was more abundant per cent pod set was maximum
with A. cerana visits. A. florea and A. cerana were observed to spend 57.83 ± 7.7 (14.10
± 2.51 sec/flower) and 45.42 ± 6.24 (8.08 ± 2.00 sec/flower) min/trip and visited 243.11
± 32.70 and 338 ± 46.77 flowers per trip, respectively. Within a day, slight interspecific
temporal resource partitioning was observed between these two species. In pollination
exclusion experiment, natural pollination had relatively more number of pods (233.1 ±
5.82), seeds (11.88 ± 1.31), higher test weight (1.62 gm), size (5.03 cm) and more oil
content ( 39.44 %) over controlled (exclusion) experiment (142.3 ± 11.61 pods, 6.7 ±
1.33 seeds, 1.21 gm, 3.6 cm and 26.66 % respectively).
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