Rollinia Hand Pollination Support Request

[thesimsdude]

Howdy, Ive got a 20 ft tall Rollinia that flowers non stop and has only ever made one fruit, I am going to resort to doing some hand pollination and am seedling any tips, graphics, information and photos as possible. Any tips would be huge. Thanks friends!

[roblack]

You gotta collect female pollen, usually at night, and separate from all other plant material. Put in sealed small container with desiccant pack, and keep in fridge til the following night or next couple of nights. Then use paint brush to pollinate female flowers.  All flowers start off female, then turn male.

You can break off a wing/petal of the flower to better get inside of female flowers, which should only be barely open. If a flower has fully opened, it is male.   

[brian]

Same here.  I need to get off my butt to hand-pollinate to actually get to taste fruit from the large cherimoya and rollinia trees I have.  They are wearing out their welcome in my greenhouse, where lots of self-fruitful trees are producing without obvious insect pollination

[thesimsdude]

You gotta collect female pollen, usually at night, and separate from all other plant material. Put in sealed small container with desiccant pack, and keep in fridge til the following night or next couple of nights. Then use paint brush to pollinate female flowers.  All flowers start off female, then turn male.

You can break off a wing/petal of the flower to better get inside of female flowers, which should only be barely open. If a flower has fully opened, it is male.

Is the Desiccant pack an absolutely necessary step?

[roblack]

Desiccant is not necessary, but helps reduce moisture and increases duration of pollen viability. Getting all the plant material separate from pollen is more important.

Dry uncooked rice might be a decent sub for desiccant.

[roblack]

How's the pollination thing going?

Was in the garden the other day, and thought some strange mutation was going on:

[Jessg333]

Link has photos and explanation that's very helpful. I collect pollen around 6:00 pm and pollinate the following afternoon or evening. For me pollen last about 48-72 hours in fridge Without desiccant packet. Hope you get some fruit

https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=8780.0

[Daintree]

Does this method apply to soursop, custard apple and sugar apple also? I have a rollinia, plus the ones I just mentioned.  None of them have made fruit but they do flower quite well.

Carolyn

[roblack]

It appears to work on guanabana as well.

Think it would work on all annonas. Once you know how to harvest and store fresh pollen, and can accurately identify receptive female flowers at the right time, you are in business.

[Daintree]

Whoop whoop!

[Epicatt2]

This spring my biribá produced about eight flowers.  They persisted on the tree (8 ft tall w/ a 2 in. dia. trunk) for a couple weeks.  Unfortunately I did not notice them 'til after they'd surely been open too long to try to manually pollinate.  Was hoping that I'd get a couple fruit set but nothing happened.  (Well, this was its first time blooming.)

Just curious as to whether any of our TFFers here in west central Florida have noticed any self-polination on their trees.  Do we know if there is any pollinating vector here in Florida and/or what it is?  If so how does one encourage that (or those) vectors rather than hand pollinating?

I know that those tinly brown beetles that love fallen/spoiling citrus fruit seem to be attracted to and can pollinate sugar apples, but are they attracted to a biribá in flower?  Anyone know?

Cheers!

Paul M.
Tampa / 9b
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[roblack]

Definitely getting fruit without hand pollination here is SE FL. Not sure which critters are helping, if any. Fertilization definitely helps too. Our compost bin drips into the root field of the rollinia tree, since then, more flowers and fruit.