Effect of pollen sources on fruit set and quality of edible fig (Ficus carica L.) cv. ‘Bursa Siyahı’

Abstract

The caprification practice has been used widely in fig cultivation because it affects the yield and quality of fig fruits, a phenomenon known as the ‘xenia effect’. The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of pollen sources on fruit sets and fruit quality in the ‘Bursa Siyahı’ fig cultivar in 2017 and 2018. The eleven male genotypes and five cultivars were used as pollen source. The findings obtained in the present study showed that pollen sources significantly affected fruit set, early fruiting rate, fruit size, ostiole width, skin and flesh thickness, titratable acidity (TA), pH, and soluble solids content (SSC). The fruit set ratio varied from 32.02% (‘16 03 06’) to 76.66% (‘16 08 07’), and fruit weight varied from 77.29 g (‘16 03 06’) to 106.88 g (‘16 00 01’) based on pollen sources. The ostiole diameter ranged from 3.84 mm (‘16 ZF 08’) to 7.67 mm (‘77 00 01’). The skin thickness ranged from 3.01 mm (‘Havran’) to 5.35 mm (‘16 00 01’). The principal component analysis was performed to distinguish the pollen sources for the ‘Bursa Siyahı’ cultivar. The analysis proposed that the most important factors affecting the fig quality can be reduced to five components. Fruit weight (0.958), skin thickness (0.810), flesh l* value (0.821), pH (-0.872), and SSC (0.836) value could be regarded as the characteristic indicators for PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, and PC5, respectively.  The results showed that ‘16 09 10’, ‘16 05 03’, ‘16 08 07’, and ‘16 08 12’ pollen sources are adequate pollinators for the edible ‘Bursa Siyahı’ fig.