Pollination Problems of Cucurbits (2024)

FAQs

Pollination Problems of Cucurbits? ›

High humidity creates sticky pollen which does not transfer well. Plants in the cucurbit family rely on honeybees for pollination, and honeybees do not fly in cool, cloudy weather. Diseases have dramatically reduced the honeybee population and the ones that are still active remain very susceptible to insecticides.

Increased risk of pollination failure is associated with pollen if it is delivered to a stigma too little, too much, too late, too mixed in composition or too poor in quality. It is associated with pollinators when they are too few or too inconstant, and with plants when they are too specialized or too selective.

Cucurbits are monoecious; there are separate male and female blossoms on the same plant. The male flowers tend to open first, followed by the female flowers. It is only when both the male and female flowers are open that pollination can occur.

Blooms will simply drop off the plant if they are not pollinated. This can be caused by low bee activity due to cool, wet temperatures or from pesticide sprays. Undeveloped fruits will drop off with blooms or may drop several days afterward due to the same lack of pollination and fertilization.

Air pollution disrupts plant reproduction by making it harder for pollinators to find flowers. In a lab setting, tobacco hawkmoths were 50% less successful in locating flowers under polluted conditions, while white-lined sphinx moths couldn't find them at all.

The first flowers to appear on cucumbers and other vine crops are predominantly male. As a result, fruit production is poor when the vines begin to flower. The cucumber vines should start producing a good crop within a few weeks as the number of female flowers increases.

Cucumber flowers are not very attractive to native bees, so honey bees are the most important pollinator in commercial pickling cucumber fields, accounting for 98% of bee visits to cucumber flowers. Honey bees visit flowers for two reasons: pollen for protein, and nectar for carbohydrates.

Completely burpless and without a trace of bitterness, they are also seedless if grown apart from other cucumber plants! The heavy-bearing vine needs no bees for pollination, so you don't have to wait till the garden gets going to start harvesting these scrumptious fruits!

How do you add help to pollination? ›

Flowers produce a sugary liquid called nectar which many insects consume on a large basis. When insects land on a flower, pollen grains tend to stick to their bodies. The insect then moves from one to another flower of the same species, pollen gets transferred to the stigma of flowers and hence causing pollination.

Invasive plants crowd out native ones, reducing food and shelter for pollinators. Disease-causing organisms— including viruses, fungi and bacteria — can spread from non-native to native pollinators. Other stressors, such as poor nutrition and pesticide exposure, may intensify the effect of diseases.

Pollination can be affected by various factors, including the abundance and diversity of pollinators, the quality and quantity of pollen, and the timing of pollination relative to flowering.

Pollution, pesticides, pests, pathogens, and changes in land use, and climate change have all been associated with shrinking and shifting pollinator populations, particularly insect pollinators.

Pollination is usually the unintended consequence of an animal's activity on a flower. The pollinator is often eating or collecting pollen for its protein and other nutritional characteristics or it is sipping nectar from the flower when pollen grains attach themselves to the animal's body.

Causes of incomplete pollination may be inadequate pollen transfer by pollinating insects; inadequate pollen sources (pollenizers); or hot, dry weather that reduces pollen viability or that desiccates flower parts during pollination.