TITLE:
The Responses of Pineapple Varieties to Forced-Flower Treatment at Seedling Stage
AUTHORS:
Haiyan Shu, Keming Li, Wei Sun, Guiying Xu, Rulin Zhan, Shenghe Chang
KEYWORDS:
Pineapple; Flower, Ethephron, Vegetative-Growth Phase
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.10 No.12,
December
10,
2019
ABSTRACT: Forcing flower is an important step for planting pineapple. Although many papers have been
reported about forcing flower for pineapple plants on the aim of harvesting
fruits, no reports have been found about forcing flower at seedling phase for
preparing bonsai. In this paper, Tainong 4, Tainong 16 and Tainong 17 plants with 20 leaves were watered on stem apex with 40
ml of 0.13% of ethephron. Results showed
that most of Tainong 4 plants flowered
after being treated 30 days. None plant of Tainong 16 flowered after being treated 60
days. In the same variety, for example, Tainong 4, some plants flowered earlier, some plants flowered late. Tainong 4 was the most sensitive to ethephron at early-growth phase. Tainong 16 was the most
insensitive variety. The low flower rate in this research might be due to that
the pineapple plants were in early-vegetative-growth stage. They had not appropriate physiological
conditions for forcing flowers. For making pineapple bonsai at early-vegetative-growth phase, higher doses of forcing-flower agent should be used than those of forcing-flower agent for harvesting fruits.