Effect of pollination on dropping of flowers and fruits in new quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) cultivar and promising genotypes

Access to sufficient and good quality fruits and solving problems such as early abscission of the fruitlets depends on the status of self-fertility and self-incompatibility in cultivars and genotypes and determination of the best pollinizer for them. This research was carried out to study the best pollinizer for some quince cultivars and promising genotypes from the collection of germplasm at the Horticultural Research Station of Isfahan, Iran in 2015 and 2016. For this, the effects of the pollen donor parent, including 'Vidoja', KVD2, KVD4, 'Isfahan', 'Torsh' and also open pollination were studied on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the pollen recipient parent, including 'Vidoja', KVD2 and KVD4 as a factorial experiment in a randomized complete block design with four replications. To determine the best pollinizer, flowers of pollen recipient parents were emasculated at the balloon stage and were covered with isolation bags. Emasculated flowers were crossed with the pollen of donor parents during receptability of stigmas as well as hand self-pollination for each female parent. Results showed that some traits such as percentage of fruit set, seed numbers and total soluble solids (TSS) were affected by the pollen source. Phenol and pectin were not affected by the foreign pollen sources. According to the results, self-pollination did not have acceptable fruit set. The best pollen source for the 'Vidoja' was KVD2, for KVD4 was 'Torsh' and 'Vidoja' and for KVD2 was KVD4 and 'Vidoja', therefore the cultivation of all three female parents together in the quince orchards is recommended.