322 WHY DOES SOUR CHERRY (Prunus cerasus) PRODUCE SO MANY MORE FLOWERS THAN FRUITS?

The number of flowers produced by sour cherry greatly exceeds the number of fruits developed. Two hypotheses to explain this disparity were investigated: (1) pollen may be limiting, and (2) a large flower display is important for pollinator attraction. Self-incompatibility, which is common in sour cherry, was considered. Fruit set, floral morphology, and flower density were measured on 18 sour cherry selections, both self-compatible and self-incompatible (SI), in the MSU sour cherry germplasm collection following open- and bulk-pollination. Although supplemental hand pollination resulted in a significant increase in fruit set, the final fruit set was still low (18% vs 14%) indicating that lack of pollination alone was insufficient to account for the low fruit set. The SI selections had significantly larger flower cups, pistil/petal size ratio, and more flowers/branch cross-sectional area suggesting that flower display may have an increased role in pollinator attraction in the SI selections. These results will be discussed in relation to 2 additional hypotheses: insufficient maternal resources and genetic factors resulting in pre- or post-zygotic selection.