Dragon Fruit Fruiting Results from 2015

The results described here are compilation of data from the table published at https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2016/01/dragon-fruit-flowers-and-fruits-2015.html

Variety codes

8S - 8S, Sugar Dragon
AB - American Beauty
D - Delight
G2 - Thomson G2
HC - Halley's Comet
PG - Physical Graffiti
PP - Pink Panther
VG - Vietnamese Giant
VR - Valdivia Roja

Bagging fruits after pollination

This year I wanted to find out if bagging the flowers after pollination improved the fertilization success. I garden in CA Central Valley, and too often our summer nights here can be dry and windy. Paul Thomson in his book mentioned that success of fertilization depends on air humidity.  I covered some flowers with one gallon Ziploc bags with cut corners and foil attached to the bag as shown in the pictures below.  The bag stayed on the flower for about a week. This was my attempt to increase humidity around flower during pollen tube development.

Bagging flowers did not improve fertilization

After following the fate of 142 flowers, I came to the conclusion that bagging flowers after pollination did not improve the fertilization rate. Fertilization success was quite high for both, the covered with bags (84%), and not covered flowers (90%). The fertilization success data is in the table below.

	# bagged flowers	% fertilization for bagged	# not bagged flowers	% fertilization for not bagged	All flowers	% fertilization for all flowers
Fertilized	54	84	70	90	124	87
Failed	10		8		18
Total	64		78		142

Bagging flowers did not improve fruit weight

Since I collected the weight data for each fruit, I also wanted to check if bagging improved the fruit weight.  Average weight for bagged and not bagged fruits per each variety is in the table below. It does not seem that bagging helped to increase the fruit weight.  Three varieties showed higher weight when bagged, and three varieties had better weight when not bagged.  See the numbers in red font in the table.

variety	average weight, not bagged	# of not bagged fruits	average waight, bagged	# of bagged fruits	average weight for all	total number of fruits
8S	117	27	97	20	107	47
AB	0	0	337	2	337	2
D	233	6	292	5	263	11
G2	0	0	295	6	295	6
HC	378	5	0	0	378	5
PG	264	19	240	10	252	29
PP	141	4	125	5	133	9
VG	315	7	385	3	350	10
VR	230	2	256	2	243	4
		70		53		123

Flower to fruit time

And the last table here shows the time from flower to fruit for each variety.  I only used data for the first 100 fruits from flowers opened up to Sept 2. The fruit development during late fall was sub-optimal and required more days than during summer weather.  The fruits were typically picked 5-6 days after fruit color change.

variety	days from flower  to fruit	# fruits
8S	49	31
AB	51	1
D	45	9
G2	47	6
HC	47	4
PG	46	29
PP	48	9
VG	44	7
VR	50	4