Study of different flower types in wild pomegranate germplasm in Western Himalayan Zone

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is considered as andromonoecious due to having both hermaphrodite as well as male flower on the same plant. Male flower does not set fruit and hence cause loss to yield. The crop is regarded as heterostylous due to differential height of stigma. Wild pomegranate is considered as a biotype of the cultivated pomegranate and is an important wild fruit crop which resembles to the cultivated one for most of the morphological characters, flower and fruit but having exceptional acidic arils. The present study was carried out at Dr. Y. S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni in order to know the flower types of the same by morphological analysis. The flowers were also bisected longitudinally to see the pattern of pistil development and classified as male, intermediate and hermaphrodiete based on that. Two consequent years (2013–14 and 2014–15) of studies revealed that maximum number of Hermaphrodite flowers (65.67%) were seen in Mandi district (Plant No. 2), intermediate flower (33.67%) in Shimla district (Plant No.2 and 3) and male flower (23.00%) in Mandi district (Plant No. 9) among the total genotypes collected from four districts of Himachal Pradesh.