How to treat brinjal flower pollination issue: 4 Best Methods

Different parts of Brinjal Flower

Brinjal flower pollination is a major hurdle sometimes when you do not get required amount of fruits from your plant. If flowers are blooming in your plant and are not turning into fruits even if you have provided all the nutrients and other care to the plant, brinjal flower pollination can be an issue.

We need to understand the flower structure of brinjal to treat the brinjal flower pollination issue better. Major parts of the flower which takes part in pollination are pistil and stamen. Pistil of the brinjal plant is surrounded by stamens (6-20 in numbers) which carry pollen. Pollination happens when these pollen fall on the tip of pistil called stigma.

Image by Sandeep Handa from Pixabay

Eggplants or brinjal have complete flowers and can self-pollinate under optimum conditions. Since they have an ability to self-pollinate the plants are known as perfect pollinators as they can pollinate without any intervention from outside. Many times bees and other insects also help in pollination process of the brinjal flowers.

How to treat brinjal flower pollination issue?

In case the plants do not bear fruits under optimum conditions and the flowers fall off, the plants should be hand pollinated. There are several ways in which the plant can be hand pollinated.

“It is always better to pollinate the flower in the morning when the flowers are fully open no matter the method used.“

Select the mature flowers while hand pollinating. These flowers are mostly present at the bottom of the cluster. These flowers have matured pollen and pistil and the chances of successful pollination and fertilization is more. The pollen can be seen as yellow powder on the tip of the stamen.

Some of the common methods that can be adopted for hand pollination are:

1. Tap or shake the plant gently, this is one of the most common and easiest methods to hand pollinate a brinjal plant. The tapping or shaking of the plant loosens the pollen which gets transferred to the stigma of the pistil. Tap the flowers or the plant at least 2 or 3 times a week until the pollination takes place, that is when the flower closes and small fruit buds start appearing. 
2. The pollen can be manually transferred to the tip of the pistil with the help of a paint brush. A cotton swab can also be used for this purpose. Insert the brush or the cotton swab inside the flower and gently move it around to spread the pollen around. The yellow powder (pollen) present on the stamen can also be collected and placed on the stigma with the help of the brush.
3. An electric toothbrush is also sometimes used to produce enough vibration on the flower to assist pollination. The vibration causes the pollen to loosen up and fall on the stigma. 
4. In some cases, the pollen or the stamen on the whole can be carefully removed from the flower with the help of forceps or tweezers. The pollen can be placed on the head of the stigma or the head of the stamen can be brushed on the surface of the stigma to allow the transfer of the pollen.  

Any of these methods can be adopted for hand pollinating an eggplant/ brinjal plant.

The rate of success in pollination mostly depends on following factors:

• The maturity of the flowers. More mature flower will be pollinated fast.
• Proper transferring of the pollen to the stigma.
• Sometimes other factors like nutrition, water, sunlight etc. can also play a major role is pollination and producing fruits.

If given proper care, the eggplants should fertilize and produce fruits. 

Hope this article will help you in resolving the brinjal flower pollination issue.