Hmm I too am curious about this since my 5 seeds germinated, are you looking for hand pollination methods?

No...actually I was looking for more info on the pollen itself and how long it may be viable. Cherimoya pollen is good up to about 24 hours. I can only assume sugar apples is nearly the same.

I'm doing pretty well with pollination of my plants right now. It's quite a daily project hunting for male flowers, collecting the pollen, then waiting for the little ladies to show up. I have to start being a little more scientific about my approach though and gather in a little more details. It seems that pollen is not always released right away and a later stage of a male may be too late. It's been a lot of fun though and I have quite a few developing.

Jay, Very interesting book. I had no idea sugar apple history went so far back in Florida. What temperature do you store your pollen at? Do you think that might affect it?

I keep it in the fridge as Eggo suggested doing when collecting cherimoya pollen. I don't believe this affects it. I usually don't have all that much left after 24 hours anyway. The blooms have really been rolling in the last couple of months. I now have approximately 30 fruit developing between the two plants and I still have tons of blooms.

As I mentioned, I should try and approach this with better observation. But there isn't always time to do this. Most times I am scrambling before work to either collect pollen from the males, service the females, or both! Exhausting work man!

Hey Jay is your sugar apple tree grown from seed? If so how long did you have to wait for it to flower?

Yes...planted from seed that somehow made their way back from Thailand with me back in 2004. Not sure how that happened. They started flowering at 3 yrs and actually had a couple of small fruit develop. More blooms last year and a few fruit went the distance. This year is off the charts. I've officially stopped collecting pollen and seeking out females...flowers that is!

Thats sweet, I bought a Box of 80 Sugar Apples from Thailand about two months ago and have 4 seedlings right now that I grew from those seeds. Also trying to Germinate some Bona Atemoya seeds from Brazil.

Annona seeds usually have very long viablity. I've received them from everywhere and they normally work. Hoping my soursop get big enough to produce by next year. Will plant out a couple chermoya this year, have 6 sugar apples planted, replaced my Thai Lessard SA which was killed by flood last year.

Nelson, what do you know about that Bona atemoya? I think atemoya is quite variable from seed, do you know if that var. is normally grafted?

Gary

Im not sure but even if the fruit tastes half as good and the ones I ate from them I would be really happy. They tasted so good very few seeds I bought 4 and got about 50 seeds in total thats less than one sugar apple lol.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bona Atemoya

This is my first year of hand pollinating. To avoid putting all of my eggs in one basket, I've been using different techniques, and marking the locations. What will be my first indication that the flower was pollinated correctly, and how long will that take? ( I've mixed the pollen with talcum powder or water...tried pollinating with and without removing a petal or two, etc.)

I really want to thank you for posting this article and your experience with this.
I have never gotten fruit from my trees, but after reading this, I started spreading pollen in the early morning and now I have some tiny fruit starting! Yeah! I have no idea what it is, I just bought it as an anon. But I will know as soon as my fruits mature.

Anyone have any idea about pollinating Rollinia? They have a different shape and I am wondering when their pollen is ready for release and the females are ready ad receptive. I still can't tell when they are ready.

When I finally stopped pollinating flowers and began pinching off the remaining ones, I had around 96+ fruit in different stages of development on my larger plant and about 49 on the smaller one. My pollination attempts were obviously successful.

It was a foregone conclusion that I would end up losing a large number of these precious fruit. There was just no way in hell these 5 year old trees in containers were going to hold onto that many. And they are not! For the past few weeks, smaller fruit has been dropping, some even turning black or the stem turns black and then drops. Still have more than half on each tree but it is sad to observe. I believe I will manually remove some more in order to head off the possibility of losing an even larger number.