Some new facts about Soursop (Annona muricata) that I learned today. Why does soursop's fruit 'almost' always have hooked shape? The answer is improper pollination.
How can this happened?
In nature, soursop's flower is pollinated by ants. Soursop's flower looks like a leathery box, inside its multiple stigma is circled by hundreds of stamens. Logically, pollination is easily happened because of the complete flower equipment. But, there's a problem: its stigmas matures earlier than the pollens. So pollination usually happened by neighbouring pollens carried by ants, which walk in straight line, thus leaving a part of unpollinated stigma. Or for better shaped fruit, you can collect it's pollen by shaking the flower (by this time, stigma is no longer sticky/receptive) to pollinate other flower using brush for even pollination. Here are some pictures of soursop taken today. Enjoy!
1. picture of soursop flower
2. mature stigma, pollinated by ants
3. anatomy of soursop flower: dome of hundreds of tiny white sticky stigmas, circled by (immature) stamens packed in scale-like formation
4. mature pollens. keep in air-tight container in cool fridge, it'll last for a month; ready to pollinate any mature female.
5. successful hand-pollination, indicated by straight oblong shape. Each spikes represents single stigma
6. mature soursop fruit, indicated by stretched spikes
7. inside is white flesh with sweet sour taste. each lobes represents each spikes/stigma
8. me and yummy soursop :)
4 comments:
sirsak nya kok ga nyampe sini?
I have a soursop tree, thinking of hand pollination. Plenty of flowers at the main stem, but so far no fruits yet, only reach to the stage of picture 4. Thereafter, the flower dried up and drop.
Have plenty of bees in my garden, but they are only interested in my starfruit tree when it is flowering. :-(
Good and nice picture
How long does it take for soursop to flower from seedling?
Post a Comment