Department of Vegetable Crops, Landscaping and Floriculture, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 141 004
*Present address: Research Associate, Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, Kansas, USA.
Investigations conducted on three cultivars of egg plant i e. BL-4, BL-3 and S-16 show that fruit set was 86.60 per cent in BL-4 followed by BL-3 and S 16 when hand pollination was done. All the short-styled flowers were dropped in S-16 under both open and hand pollination conditions. Short-styled and pseudo-short-styled flowers did not set fruit and proved to be male fertile only. The studies revealed the breaking and buldging of pollen tubes in pseudo-short-styled flowers of S-16. Normal pollen tubes were seen transversing the whole length in long and medium-styled flowers of all the varieties after 4–12 hours of pollination. Presence of heterostylism in S-16 and pollen germination confirm comparatively low fruit set as compared to BL-3 and BL-4.
