Few crops are more challenging to pollinate than kiwi. Here’s the reason. For high fruit quality a large number of pollen grains per flower (> 3000) are required. Nectar production in kiwi flowers is generally poor, resulting in low attractiveness to honeybees. Furthermore, kiwi plants are “dioecious” meaning that male and female viable reproductive structures are on separate plants. The only way to set fruit is through cross-pollination. The proportion of non-fruit bearing, and thus “unreproductive” male plants in the orchard is generally limited, e.g. often 1 male plant to 5-8 females is advised. This limits availability of pollen.
▲充分授粉的紅心獼猴桃
很少有作物比獼猴桃更難授粉。原因如下。為了獲得高質量的果實，每朵花需要大量的花粉粒（>3000粒）。獼猴桃的花蜜產量普遍較差，導致對蜜蜂的吸引力較低。此外，獼猴桃植物是“雌雄異株”的，這意味著雄性和雌性可行的生殖結構在不同的植物上。結果的唯一方法是通過異花授粉。果園中不結果的、因此“不生產”的雄性植物的比例通常是有限的，例如，通常建議1株雄性植物對5-8株雌性植物。這限制了花粉的可用性。
▲獼猴桃雄花蕾
This explains why, in several countries, technologies for pollen collection and assisted pollination have been developed. Both dry and wet pollen spraying techniques are being utilized. Assisted pollination includes both manual and mechanical pollination techniques.
這就解釋了為什么在幾個國家已經開發(fā)了花粉收集和輔助授粉技術。干式和濕式花粉噴灑技術都在使用中。輔助授粉包括人工和機械授粉技術。
▲A picture of pollinating kiwi fruit
Assisted pollination techniques do allow to achieve good fruit quality. However, they are often not easy to apply. Growers either need to collect pollen themselves or have to purchase pollen from third parties, which should then be of high quality and disease-free. The pollen needs to be applied on the flowers. This process is labor intensive and often, wasteful in terms of pollen consumption. (e.g. with pollen spraying only a small fraction of the pollen ends up on the flowers).
輔助授粉技術確實可以實現良好的果實質量。然而，它們往往不容易應用。種植者要么需要自己收集花粉，要么必須從第三方購買花粉，這樣花粉就應該是高質量、無病的。花粉需要涂在花上。這個過程是勞動密集型的，而且在花粉消耗方面往往是浪費的。（例如，在噴灑花粉的情況下，只有一小部分花粉最終落在花朵上）。
▲Kiwi pollen pollination
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