Studies on the Pollination Requirement of Plum, Cultivar ‘Climax’

The blooming periods of all the five plum cultivars viz., Yellow, Monarch, Maynard, Burbank and Burbank Great Yellow tried as pollinisers overlapped sufficiently with that of Climax. Male flowers were observed to be maximum in Maynard (21 per cent) followed by Climax and Burbank (17 per cent each). Heterostyly, the other important floral disorder was highest in Yellow plum (93.8 per cent) followed by Monarch (87 per cent) and Maynard (67 per cent). Pollen was sufficiently viable in all the cultivars except Maynard where only 5 per cent of the pollen grains could germinate in 15 per cent sucrose solution.