The lychee fruit is in high demand worldwide. However, the yields of many cultivars are low, including the high-quality cultivars "Nuomici" (NMC) and "Fei Zi Xiao" (FZX), which are very tasty and produce large fruit with a small seed, but tend to shed their fruitlets. In a previous work, we found that cross-hand pollination of "Mauritius" (MA) with pollen of another cultivar increased fruit set and reduced fruit-drop in comparison to self-hand pollination. In the current research, we aimed to identify the optimal pollen donor for three of the main cultivars grown in Israel: MA, FZX, and "Tamuz" (TA). We compared the effect of different pollinizers and found that the Vietnamese cultivar "Hong Long" (HL), which is becoming an important cultivar in Israel, was the optimal pollinizer for the three cultivars. In addition, we found that FZX and TA were not self-fertile under the Israeli environmental conditions since they tend to shed fruitlets that originated from self-fertilization. In contrast, MA is able to fertilize itself, although cross-pollination greatly increased its fruit number and size. We also identified a new PCR marker for lychee, M3, that enabled us to distinguish between self- and cross-fertilized FZX fruits pollinated by HL. Our results indicate that cross-pollination, particularly by HL, has beneficial effects on the production of lychee and it is especially important for cultivars that generate small seeds and tend to shed their fruitlets.
Keywords: fertilization; fruit set; lychee (Litchi chinensis Sonn.); pollination; yield.