Exploring the Xenia Effect: Differential Responses of Six Pollen Parents with Five Maternal Apple Cultivars

To investigate the xenia effect while bearing in mind the significance of pollination and the pollen effect on xenia quality, a study was designed to determine the effect of the pollen grain of six pollen parents (‘Anna’, ‘Red Velox’, ‘Red Chief’, ‘Gala Redlum’, ‘Red Chief Camspur’, ‘Red Gold’) on five maternal parents (‘Pinova’, ‘Golden Clone-B’, ‘Granny Smith’, ‘Golden Delicious Reinders’, ‘Sunhari’) during 2021 using a randomized complete block design with three replications. Observations were recorded on fruit length (mm), fruit diameter (mm), fruit weight (g), seed number, and fruit firmness (kg/cm 2 ). Other chemical characteristics such as total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity, and total sugars were also observed. Significant variations were observed for all the floral phenological traits among cultivars. Regarding the xenia affect, the pollen source significantly affected fruit firmness, total soluble solids (TSS), fruit acidity, total sugars, and fruit weight and colour values in all cross combinations. Source of pollen also had positive and significant effects on the fruit qualitative characteristics of some varieties, especially ‘Granny Smith’ crossed with ‘Red Gold’, which recorded good size parameters, i.e., length (75.59 mm), diameter (82.04 mm), weight (224.52 g) and flesh firmness (9.53 kg/cm 2 ). From the present study, it is concluded that the variety ‘Red Gold’ and ‘Gala Redlum’ was the best pollen source and exhibited maximum compatibility with most of the varieties.