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#Experts overcome the difficulties in growing seedless lychees#

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In today's world where food is extremely abundant, seedless lychees have the same rare status as ordinary lychees in ancient times due to their bright color, crystal clear crispness, sweetness and little residue. However, they are extremely difficult to grow and have a low yield: a box of seedless lychees only contains 24 pairs or 48 fruits, but the market price is as high as 550 yuan, and they are in short supply every year.

But recently, the litchi and longan research team of the Institute of Environmental Plant Research, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, successfully solved the planting problems of this high-end fruit, such as difficulty in flowering and severe fruit cracking and falling before harvest. They developed seedless litchi flowering promotion and pre-harvest cracking and fruit falling prevention technologies. After field application demonstration, the fruit cracking rate was less than 3.9%, the fruit drop rate was only 4.6%, and the commercial fruit rate was as high as 86.1%.

This means that seedless lychees will hopefully enter the fruit plates of ordinary people. So, how did scientists overcome the problem?

According to the head of the litchi and longan research team of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, seedless litchis have been successfully bred since 1997 and have been planted for more than 20 years, with a seedless rate of more than 95%. Due to its attractive quality and high price, it developed rapidly around 2000, but during the production process, it was found that there were major difficulties in the cultivation of seedless litchis. First, the flowering was unstable, and it was extremely difficult to bloom in warm winter years. Second, the fruit was prone to severe cracking and fruit drop before maturity, with an annual loss of more than 40%, and in some years up to 90%, resulting in the entire orchard having no fruit to sell, which seriously affected the economic benefits of its cultivation.

Because seedless lychees are difficult to flower and have severe fruit cracking and falling, they are extremely difficult to grow, so both companies and ordinary fruit farmers are afraid to grow them. In the past decade, the planting area of ​​this variety has shrunk rapidly, and many seedless lychee orchards have been abandoned or planted with other varieties. Currently, Hainan has formed a seedless lychee planting area with Chengmai County as the core area, covering an area of ​​only more than 7,000 acres.

To address this problem, the litchi and longan research team of the Institute of Thermal Science has, after years of scientific research, conducted a large amount of research on the development dynamics, nutrient accumulation and hormone metabolism of seedless lychee branches and shoots based on the growth habits of seedless lychee trees. They have successfully developed a seedless lychee flowering-inducing technology by controlling the branches and shoots early to promote nutrient accumulation and maturity, promoting the germination of lychee flower buds at the right time, and using drugs to induce flowering. This has solved the problem of difficult and unstable flowering of seedless lychees. According to the laws of fruit and peel development, they have figured out the mechanism of seedless lychee cracking and fruit falling. Through a combination of peel growth regulation technology and prevention of fruit stalk abscission, they have developed a seedless lychee anti-cracking and anti-falling technology, successfully overcoming the serious problem of seedless lychee cracking and fruit falling before harvest, and established a 200-acre seedless lychee anti-cracking and anti-falling demonstration base in Laocheng Town, Chengmai County.

Demonstration of technology to prevent seedless lychees from cracking and falling. A: The fruits in the demonstration area are full and brightly colored, with very few cracked fruits; B: The control area has severe cracking; C: The demonstration area has very few fallen fruits; D: The control area has severe fruit falling. Image source: Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences

2022 is a low flowering year for seedless lychees. While the flowering rates at surrounding seedless lychee bases are not ideal, the demonstration garden achieved an average yield of 1,139.6 kg per mu, 96.1% of the fruits were crack-free, the fruit drop rate was only 4.6%, the commercial fruit rate was as high as 86.1%, and the output value per mu was 40,000 to 80,000 yuan, greatly improving the economic benefits of seedless lychees.

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Source: Science Popularization China WeChat Official Account