Sugar apple (Annona squamosa L) is a tropical fruit tree that has been cultivated in Alagoas for more than a century. It is one of the most important crop for hundreds of small farmers. One of the main constraints to improve this culture yield is its low pollination rate of their flowers. Although morphologicaly perfects, the flowers of sugar apple present the carpels maturation before pollen liberation in the anters preventing self-pollination. This work had the objective to study the effect of the natural, artificial and self-pollination on the number of fixed fruits in sugar apple. It was selected 40 four-year-old trees of local variety "Crioula" and flowers of the mean portion of the trees. They were applied the following treatments: natural pollination; self-pollination; hand pollination with 100% pollen using paintbrush; hand pollination with 75 % of pollen and 25 % starch using paintbrush; hand pollination with 50 % of pollen and 50 % starch using paintbrush; hand pollination with 25 % of pollen and 50 % starch using paintbrush; hand pollination with 100 % of pollen using sprayer; hand pollination with 75 % of pollen and 25 % starch using sprayer; hand pollination with 50 % of pollen and 50 % starch using sprayer; hand pollination with 25 % of pollen and 75 % starch using sprayer. The results showed that the hand pollination with paintbrush or sprayer improved by ten fold the number of fixed fruits in natural pollination. The addition of starch to the pollen up to 50% of the mixture produced the same result of pure pollen.
custard apple; artificial pollination; annona
