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Brgy. Santa Rosa, Mulanay, Quezon

Name of Researcher: Address:
Mateo,Zeil Audrei D. Brgy. Madulao, Catanauan, Quezon
De Luna, Luisa Jane F.
De Las Alas, Ma. Annis Olive E.
Grade & Section: Track: Strand:
12 - RBC Academic STEM
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Title Assessing the Floral Biology of Eggplant

(Solanum melongena L.) in Brgy. Madulao,

Catanauan, Quezon

I. Introduction

Eggplant is an old world specie, unlike other solanaceous crops which are native to the

world (Gurbuz, N., Uluisik, S., Frary, A., Frary A., and Doganlar, S., (2018). Although various

eggplant species are grown around the world, the Solanum melongena is the most widely

cultivated. Also called aubergine or Guinea squash, eggplant is a tender perennial plant of the

nightshade family (Solanaceae), grown for its edible fruits (Petruzzello, 2015). It is often grown

as an annual and has an upright bushy stem with spines. Large, oval, and lobed leaves. The

fruit is a huge egg-shaped berry with a glossy surface that ranges in color from dark purple to

red, pink, or yellowish, and is sometimes striped with green and white. In order for it to bear

fruit, just like other plants, it must first undergo pollination as pollination is essential for plant

sexual reproduction. The absence of flowers means the absence of fruits. The smaller the

number of flowers, the lower the yield can be expected. Different plant species use a variety of

methods to ensure the flowers are successfully pollinated and would produce a hundred

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percent fruit onset. In this study, the researchers will be utilizing the three pollination

techniques; open, hand and close pollination to further assess the pollination Ecology of

eggplant (Solanum melongena L.).

The eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), locally known as talong is one of the most

popular vegetable in the Philippines grown solely for domestic consumption. Eggplants are

commonly grown with the economical gain as primary purpose. But aside from that, they are

also after the health benefits of it. Despite not being the most nutritious vegetable, it does give a

decent supply of potassium and fiber. It also has antioxidants like vitamin A and C, which help

protect your cells against damage. It’s also high in natural plant chemicals called polyphenols;

which may help cells do a better job of processing sugar if you have diabetes (Watson, S.,

2021). The chlorogenic acid is the most prevalent phenolic component in eggplant fruits; having

a heart- healthy impact.

The crop can be grown any time of the year in areas with good irrigation and drainage.

First planting is usually done in October to February; second planting in May to September.

Eggplant grows best in sandy loam to clay loam soils (Magsasaka, 2021). Farmers need

improved eggplant varieties for sustainable production and adaptation to climate change

challenges. Because eggplant has a relatively long growth period, it is more exposed than other

vegetable crops to a broad range of plant diseases, pests, nematodes, and weeds (Rotino et.

al., 1997). Spacing generally should be 45 centimeters (18 inches) to 60 centimeters (24

inches) between plants, depending on cultivar, and 60 centimeters to 90 centimeters (24 to 36

inches) between rows, depending on the type of cultivation equipment being used. Mulching will
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help conserve moisture and prevent weeds and fungal diseases. Fruits are typically cut from the

vine just above the calyx owing to the semi-woody stems.

The study's findings will benefit many people, particularly farmers, because eggplant is

one of the most essential, economical, and popular vegetable crops grown and consumed not

only in the Philippines, but across Asia. The increased demand for eggplant production

supports the necessity for more effective pollination methods. Thus, approaches derived from

the findings of this study will be able to benefit farmers and consumers even more. They will be

advised on what should be prioritized while growing eggplants to promote pollination ecology.

This investigation will assist the researchers discover new concepts that other researchers were

unable to investigate. As a result, a new theory on the Floral Biology and Pollination ecology of

eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) will be developed. Therefore, assessing this situation is

beneficial in one way or another.

Statement of the Problem

This study will tend to document the Floral Biology and Pollination Ecology of eggplant

(Solanum melongena L.). Specifically, it will seek to answer the following questions:

1. What are the descriptions of floral biology of eggplant?

2. What are the descriptions of pollination ecology of eggplant?

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in terms of the following:

2.1 open pollination

2.2 hand pollination

2.3 bagged pollination?

3. What is the percentage of fruit set of eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)?

II. Review of Related Literature

This part presents the different literature and studies that helps in familiarizing information

relevant and related to the present study.

Floral biology of Solanum melongena

Eggplant, brinjal or aubergine (Solanum melongena L.) is together with tomato among

the most widely known edible fruits of the Solanaceae family (Daunay, 2008). Eggplants are

thought to be derived from the wild African species, Solanum incanum. The scarlet eggplant

(Solanum aethiopicum L.) and the gboma eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon L.), grown and

consumed in Africa and represent an important source of genetic variation (Daunay et.al.,

2001b).

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Eggplants have a strong and well-developed root system. The stem is 0.5–2 m tall and

may often be spiny. Leaves are large (10–20 cm), lanceolate, and coarsely lobulated. Most

varieties bloom in three to five flowers bunches. Flowers are large, white, or purple-white and

have a five-lobed corolla and large anthers (Zaro, M.J., Vicente, A., Ortiz, C.M., Chaves, A.R.,

2015). The eggplants begin flowering after forming – depending on a variety – 9 to 12

assimilation leaves, i.e. about 70–90 days after emergence. The eggplant flowers are

hermaphrodite; they are single or arranged in inflorescences composed of 2–7 flowers each,

and show positive geotropism (Konys, 1993). The flower buds develop in the corners of the

same leaves as vegetative buds. The blooms of eggplant are quite near to one another during

the start of the flowering period. When internodes are longer, the distances between flowers

also increase (Shah and Patel 1970). Results achieved by Prasad and Prakash (1968) in study

upon flowering biology of four eggplant varieties indicate that young flower buds are oval or

conical in shape and green in color. In practice, the time of their opening is the same. The

flowers bloom between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, it begins to close, and

late at night, it entirely closes. That cycle continues for 1-3 days, with the flowers closing just

partially the following days. The way flowers open and close is usually determined by their age

and environmental conditions such as air temperature and relative humidity.

The eggplant flowers are quite large 3–5 cm in diameter. The corolla consists of 5–10

accreted petals of purple, pink, or white color depending on a variety. Number of stamens is 5–

7. Filaments are short, 6–20 bicameral anthers are yellow and arranged around pistil (Mc

Gregor, 1976). When a flower blooms, the pollen grains and germ sack are fully formed. The

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anthers break in upper direction 15–30 minutes after flower opening. The pollen is quite heavy.

It can be spontaneously transferred for up to 1 m distance. The pollination duration depends on

air temperature and humidity (Prasad and Prakash, 1968). The eggplant fruits are multi-

chamber berries of different shapes. Depending on a variety, they may be: spherical, through

oval, ovoid, piriform, to elongated and spiral. Black-purple fruits, in the skin of which

anthocyanins are present, dominate in cultivation. There are also white-colored varieties, the

skin of which does not contain those pigments. At the stage of utility ripeness, fruits are light

yellow to black-purple, while brown-yellow or grey-green at the physiological ripeness stage

(George, 1985). The skin and parenchyma color is associated with the fruit color. When the skin

is colorless, fruit’s parenchyma is white, yellow, or light green. When skin contains pigments,

the parenchyma is usually dark – purple. Large, five-section hairy and thorny corolla strongly

accreted with the ovary, which makes nursery operations, fruit harvest, and storage difficult, is

characteristic for the eggplant fruits (Krug, 1991). Fruit’s color, sometimes its growth, depend on

the flower’s localization in an inflorescence. Side flowers characterized by slower growth rate

and less intensive color, set smaller and lighter fruits. Up to 1-25 fruits, about 30-2000 g each,

may be set on a single eggplant plant.

Floral biology includes the morphology, anthesis, and the mood of pollination of flowers.

Proper knowledge of mode of reproduction of the plant is important in plant breeding, because it

determine the breeding methods to be employed on the crop. Studying the plant’s anthesis

helps to perform artificial pollination.

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Pollination is one of nature’s most engaging process. It is how flowering plants

reproduce. This process involves transferring pollen from male parts to female parts of the

same plant or another plant. For some plants, the movement of pollen grains requires the

participation and action of another organism, a pollinator at that. Plants and their pollinator

builds a reciprocal relationship, each benefiting from one another. In plant-pollination

relationship, pollinators benefit by ingesting food rewards provided by the flower(s), mainly

nectar and pollen. In turn, plants benefit from the pollination process; the activity where the

pollinator transfers the pollen as it moves from one flower to another in search of food. That

pollen movement allows plants to reproduce and exchange genetic information with other plants

(Galen & Storks, n.d.). But it does not end there, different techniques are applied to ensure a

more success of the pollination.

Open Pollination refers to the technique in which the plants under this set up are

pollinated naturally- be it by insect pollinators, wind or human hands. This is the most common

technique used by many. In this set up, the researchers leave the flower as it is and see how

these pollinators affect the flowers biology. Contributions from the males were uncontrolled in

this set up, thus allowing control on only half of the resulting progeny genome. On the other

hand, close pollination or bagging is a way of shielding emasculated flowers from unwanted

pollen grains. Despite the fact that the flower is obscured by a bag, it achieves receptivity. The

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bags or nets with varying pores diameters will either restrict all pollination or allow pollen or

small pollinators to access the flower while preventing the larger pollinators from doing so. To

assess the degree and mode of self-incompatibility, flowers need to be bagged to exclude all

pollination vectors, including the windblown pollens. If fruit is produced from flowers that have

been bagged and emasculated by careful excision of the anthers before they dehisced, it

provides evidence that the flowers can reproduce asexually (parthenocarpy). If flowers do not

yield fruit, but flowers that are left bagged intact set seed, then they are capable of autonomous

self-pollination through physical means (i.e., pollen grains dropping on to stigmas), and they are

self-compatible (Pattermore, D.E.,2017).

Meanwhile, eggplant is usually wind pollinated, meaning it does not rely on insects like

bees and moths to pollinate it. A pollination problem may occur when weather conditions are

either very wet, overly humid, or excessively hot (Rhoades, 2021). When air is very humid,

moisture causes the pollen of the eggplant flower to be very sticky and it cannot fall down unto

the pistil to pollinate the flower. When the weather is too hot, the pollen becomes inactive

because the plant thinks that it cannot support the stress of an additional fruit along with the hot

weather. In a sense, the plant aborts the blossom as not to stress itself further. If eggplant is a

suspect for the flowers falling off, use hand pollination, which is the manual transfer of pollen

from the stamen or male part of the flower to the pistil or female part. A cotton bud can be used

to do this; just brush off the tip of the cotton bud on the male part of the flower then rub it

against the female part. The purpose of hand pollination is to assist in the reproductive process

of the plant (Miller, 2020). Hand pollination achieves nearly a 100% fruit set, producing larger

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fruit containing more seeds (Patterson, 1989).

Wilting often occurs 24 hours after the flower has been pollinated (Megan, 2019). Also, in

female blossoms, the ovule will began to bulge as it produce fruit. Although it is dependent on

the variety of the eggplant, most cultivars of the eggplant will grow and develop fruit 50 to 80

days after the flowers bloom and had been pollinated.

Conceptual Framework

Input-Process-Output

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III. Methodology

This section describes the research method. It focuses on the method utilized to perform

this study, which includes research design, demographic and sample, research instrument, data

collection method, and data analysis.

A. Research Design

Research is a scientific approach of answering a research question, solving a problem or

generating new knowledge through a systematic and orderly collection, organization, and

analysis of information with an ultimate goal of making the research useful in decision-making

(Kabir, 2016).

This study utilized experimental approach. According to Harland, n.d., “Experimental

research is a study that strictly adheres to a scientific research design. It includes a hypothesis,

a variable, that can be manipulated by the researcher/s, and variables that can be measured,

calculated and compared. Most importantly, experimental design is completed in a controlled

environment.” The hallmark of experimental research is randomly assigning participants to

different treatments (Sauro, 2013).

In both laboratory and field experiments, researchers normally control which group the

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subjects are assigned to. In a natural experiment, an external event or situation (“nature”)

results in the random or random-like assignment of subjects to the treatment group. Even

though some use random assignments, natural experiments are not considered to be true

experiments because they are observational in nature. Although the researchers have no

control over the independent variable, they can exploit this event after the fact to study the

effect of the treatment (Thomas, 2020).

B. Population and Sample

A population is the entire group that you want to draw conclusions about, while a

sample is the specific group that you will collect data from. The size of the sample is always

less than the total size of the population (Bhandari, 2020). In research, a population does

not always refer to people, just like in this study. The population here is the eggplant and its

blossoms as the samples. The flowers to be observed were selected using purposive

sampling…….

They are located at the backyard of one of the researchers’ house in Brgy. Madulao,

Catanauan,Quezon.

C. Variables

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A variable is either a result of some force or is itself the force that causes a change in

another variable(s). Variables are given a special name that only applies to experimental

investigation; these are called dependent and independent variables respectively (Dr.

McLeod, 2019).

1. Independent variable is the variable the experimenter manipulates

or changes, and is assumed to have a direct effect on the

dependent variable.

2. Dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured

an experiment, and is ‘dependent’ on the independent variable.

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D. Data Collection and Data Source

Any information that has been collected, observed, generated, or created to validate

original study findings is referred to as research data. Although most data are digital, non-

digital media such as laboratory notebooks and diaries are also included (Author). The data

of this study is the result of the observation about the floral biology and pollination ecology of

eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), as well as the effect of the pollination techniques on the

percentage of fruit set. The (Your data are pictures) …Specify the time and frequency of

observation)

Data sources are mostly the results of the observation done and the recent studies

and other materials on the internet as basis.

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