Effect of bee attractants on fruiting behaviour and fruit quality of Kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa A. chev.)

The study was carried out to compare hand pollination with bee attractants for their effectiveness to improve fruit set, fruit size and quality of kiwifruit. Bee scent (1.25%) spray resulted in enhancing the fruit quality attributes and also had minimum proportion of ‘C’ grade fruits (29.77%) and titratable acidity in fruit juice (1.15%). Bee scent treatment manifested a substantial increase in the fruit set, yield, number of seeds per fruit, fruit length, diameter, weight, TSS and total sugars by 35.69, 25.20, 38.45, 20.25, 11.13, 14.45, 15.53 and 14.92 per cent, respectively over control. Jaggery solution (10%) was second most effective bee attractant treatment after Bee scent (1.25%) to improve the fruit set, yield and fruit quality attributes of kiwifruit. Seed set in the fruits exhibited highly positive and significant relationship with fruit set, yield, fruit size, weight, TSS and total sugars. The commercial bee attractant Bee scent (1.25%) and local bee attractant Jaggery solution (10%) have shown the potential to be used in commercial kiwifruit production system as a suitable substitute for laborious practice of hand pollination.