Pollination
Litchi is a highly cross pollinated crop. An individual flower is self sterile, but it possesses nectar. The pollination of flower requires insects like honey bees, flies, ants and wasp.
Mainly pollination in litchi is performed by honey bee. At the time flowering, installation of honey bee boxes in litchi orchard increases the yield up to 30-40 per cent. Beside that, growers can also obtain honey and can get extra income.
Fruit-set
With the successful pollination of the flower, a burst of growth of the erstwhile ovary occurs and development of a fruit begins. Most of the flowers are either male or pseudo hermaphrodite. Thus a small proportion of female flowers are produced and a limited numbers of flowers have successful pollination and fertilization. As a result of successful pollination and fertilization fruit development starts and fruit set is observed on a panicle. However, it has been observed that the fruit-set in litchi ranges from 1 to 48 per cent depending upon the cultivar, tree vigour and environment condition. It is also believed that 20 fruits per panicle finally produce a good crop.
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Fruit set/ flowering in Litchi
As such, it is not the trend in litchi. I mean it is not a dioucious crop( having male female plants seperately). Your tree does not flower. It might be related to nutrition. Excessive N also leads to such problem. However, i would like to know the plant profile particularly age of plant and details of your crop management. Will get back to u again after getting this details. Hope this will lead to some solution.
Identification of male Litchee?
My neighbour has a litchee tree that has never flowered / fruited. We suspect it is a "male" tree...is there any such thing as a totally male plant. My tree which was planted from the same stock, does flower and fruit, though. What is the way for identifying whether or not the tree is male? and is there a way to induce flowering/fruiting in a dormant tree such as my neighbours?
Thanks in advance,
Srini