Self-incompatibility Studies of Some Iranian Late-Blooming Almonds and Pollen Source Effect on Some Characteristics of Nuts

Abstract

The objective of this experiment was to evaluate self-compatibility of two late blooming almond cultivars and identification and introduction of suitable pollinizers from late flowering genotypes, and evaluation of pollen source effect on fruit characteristics to earn high quality nuts for Iranian almond industry. This experiment was carried out in order to determine the best pollinizer for two commercial almond cultivars, ‘Shahrood 12' and ‘Shahrood 21' (♀). pollen sources were ‘Shahrood 21', ‘Genco', ‘Tuno', ‘5-15' and ‘Supernova' (♂) which were applied on ‘Sharood 21' mother trees, and ‘Shahrood 12', ‘Feilip Ceo', ‘Tuno', ‘5-15' and ‘Super-nova' (♂). The results showed no fruit formation in non-pollinated and self-pollinated flowers. However, the results from cross pollination using pollen from other cultivars showed higher fruit set using pollen of ‘Genco' for ‘Shahrood 21' , and ‘15-5' for ‘Shahrood 12' (♀) cultivars. The samples of pollinated flowers were collected for further microscopic examinations. In order to evaluate the effect of pollen sources, quantitative traits of nuts were measured. The recorded traits were length (L), width (W), thickness (T) of seeds, and W/L and T/L ratios.