Abstract

An experiment was conducted in tarai region of Uttarakhand, India to study the flowering and pollen morphological attributes in four commercial litchi cultivars i. e. Rose Scented, Calcuttia, Early Seedless and Late Seedless during two successive years 2013 and 2014, respectively. The results indicated that the cultivar Rose Scentedand Early Seedlessshowed very early initiation of flowering and full bloom. However, it was late in Late Seedless and Calcuttia. The maximum duration of flowering was noticed in Rose Scented (21.87 days), while the minimum duration of flowering was noticed in Late Seedless (20.00 days). Total number of flowers ranged between 782.50 in Late Seedless to 864.87 in Rose Scented. The maximum number of imperfect hermaphrodite female flowers (299.50) and imperfect hermaphrodite male flowers (294.62) was recorded in Rose Scented, while the maximum number of male flowers was observed in Calcuttia (277.87). The polar length and equatorial diameter of pollen grains in male flowers varied from 24.43 to 28.62 μm and 14.59 to 17.16 μm, while in imperfect hermaphrodite male flowers it varied from 26.90 to 28.87 μm and 14.59 to 16.06 μm, respectively, in the examined cultivars. The viability of litchi pollen grains varied with cultivar and ranged from 56.77 to 66.90% in male and 72.74 to 81.96% in imperfect hermaphrodite male flowers.