Question about Pollinating Custard Apple & Soursop

[Johnny Redland]

So I have two juvenile/mature trees producing a ton of flowers, but zero fruit set.  I've watched hand pollination videos where you can easily see the pollen when brushed off of the male flowers into a container.  My flowers on both my custard apple and soursop trees don't seem to have any pollen.   I've tried at all times of the day.  Why may this be?  Is it possible for a young tree to produce flowers but be too young to produce fertile pollen? Or is a tree considered mature once it starts to produce flowers and I have a different problem?

Any ideas/help would be great.  Trees are about 6-8ft each.

-Jon

[Guayaba]

Just curious Jon...how long have you been pollinating them?  My custard apple spent a long time maturing buds but didn't really start opening flowers until late June here in San Diego.  After that, the first month no pollination was successful and all the flowers and peduncles fell off. Starting in late July many of the flowers seemed to be successfully hand pollinated, but it was difficult to tell because the ovary didn't swell and become fruit right away. The peduncles have not fallen off after almost six weeks, so it appears that pollination was successful, but the fruits take so very long to mature....not like atemoya or cherimoya at all.  Adam has posted the 9 month "birthing simulation" of custard apples in the past...I think they just take a long time to form fruit.  Check to see if some of your custard apples have very small ovaries at the end of the flower stalk (peduncle).  If they are still hanging on after a few weeks you should get fruit.

[Johnny Redland]

Just curious Jon...how long have you been pollinating them?  My custard apple spent a long time maturing buds but didn't really start opening flowers until late June here in San Diego.  After that, the first month no pollination was successful and all the flowers and peduncles fell off. Starting in late July many of the flowers seemed to be successfully hand pollinated, but it was difficult to tell because the ovary didn't swell and become fruit right away. The peduncles have not fallen off after almost six weeks, so it appears that pollination was successful, but the fruits take so very long to mature....not like atemoya or cherimoya at all.  Adam has posted the 9 month "birthing simulation" of custard apples in the past...I think they just take a long time to form fruit.  Check to see if some of your custard apples have very small ovaries at the end of the flower stalk (peduncle).  If they are still hanging on after a few weeks you should get fruit.

I will check for that, but my concern is that I don't see any pollen at all.  When you pollinated yours, did you just brush a male flower a few times and then dab it inside the female without seeing pollen on your brush/tool, or did you actually see pollen? I don't see any visible pollen coming from the male flowers.

[Guayaba]

Just curious Jon...how long have you been pollinating them?  My custard apple spent a long time maturing buds but didn't really start opening flowers until late June here in San Diego.  After that, the first month no pollination was successful and all the flowers and peduncles fell off. Starting in late July many of the flowers seemed to be successfully hand pollinated, but it was difficult to tell because the ovary didn't swell and become fruit right away. The peduncles have not fallen off after almost six weeks, so it appears that pollination was successful, but the fruits take so very long to mature....not like atemoya or cherimoya at all.  Adam has posted the 9 month "birthing simulation" of custard apples in the past...I think they just take a long time to form fruit.  Check to see if some of your custard apples have very small ovaries at the end of the flower stalk (peduncle).  If they are still hanging on after a few weeks you should get fruit.

I will check for that, but my concern is that I don't see any pollen at all.  When you pollinated yours, did you just brush a male flower a few times and then dab it inside the female without seeing pollen on your brush/tool, or did you actually see pollen? I don't see any visible pollen coming from the male flowers.

My Custard Apple started flowering in a similar way as yours and didn't produce any pollen for the first couple of weeks or so.  Then I noticed when I collected the pollen in a container, that there was more pollen produced after I attempted pollination.  After about a month I noticed a lot of pollen that I collected from the male stage flowers, so don't give up.  The new flowers may just start producing pollen. I just kept pollinating flowers every week and finally had some success....at least at pollination.  This is the same thing that happened with my Atemoya (no pollen was produced the first few weeks of flowering) and I have fruit on that tree now as well.

The fruit on the Custard Apple are just now starting to increase in size, still smaller than a pea.




Here is the link to a time lapse of Adam's experience with the fruit maturing.  Maybe one of the Annona experts will chime in about pollen production.  It could be that young trees tend not to produce much pollen the first year of flowering?
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=1211.msg69087#msg69087