Vol. 12, Special Issue 11 (2023)

Author(s):
DH Padhiyar and SR Patel

Abstract:
The present investigation was made on availability of pollinator fauna of bottle gourd and impact of mode of pollination on the fruit yield of bottle gourd. Bottle gourd flowers attracted a total of nine pollinator species, encompassing eight families and spanning five orders. Of all the insect visitors, lepidopterans (44.44%) were the most prevalent, with coleoptera coming in second at 22.22%. Hemiptera, orthoptera, and odonata each accounted for 11.11% of the insect visitors. Nesidiocoris spp. found as dominant flower visitors in bottle gourd with 37.65 percent contribution. It was followed by Haptones spp. (31.76%) and Aulacophora foveicollis (9.41%). The maximum activity (30 visits/m²/5 min) of flower visitors was found during the 18:00 hrs of the day while no any activity was observed during 06:00 to 07:00 hrs and 10:00 to 14:00 hrs of the day. The quantitative parameters of yield viz. the number of fruits/plant, percent fruit set, percent malformed fruit, fruit diameter, fruit weight, yield, and yield/ha were maximum in open pollination (5.38, 59.67%, 25.09%, 6.84 cm, 961.24 g, 5.17 kg/plant and 25,836 kg/ha, respectively) compared to pollination with Apis cerana indica (5.14, 54.03%, 20.43%, 6.76 cm, 878.57 g, 4.52 kg/plant and 22,607 kg/ha, respectively). No any fruit formation was observed in pollination without insects.