Reproductive biology of the biofuel plant Jatropha curcas in its center of origin
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Biodiversity, Entomology
- Keywords
- pollination, geitonogamy, xenogamy, stingless bees
- Copyright
- © 2016 Rincón-Rabanales et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Reproductive biology of the biofuel plant Jatropha curcas in its center of origin. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1587v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1587v2
Abstract
In this work, we studied the main characteristics of flowering, reproductive system and diversity of pollinators for the biofuel plant Jatropha curcas (L.) in a site of tropical southeastern Mexico, within its center of origin. The plants were monoecious with inflorescences of unisexual flowers. The male flowers produced from 3062 to 5016 pollen grains (266-647 per anther). The plants produced fruits with both geitonogamy and xenogamy, although insect pollination significantly increased the number and quality of fruits. A high diversity of flower visiting insects (36 species) was found, of which nine were classified as efficient pollinators. The native stingless bees Scaptotrigona mexicana (Guérin-Meneville) and Trigona (Tetragonisca) angustula (Latreille) were the most frequent visitors and their presence coincided with the hours when the stigma was receptive. It is noteworthy that the female flowers open before the male flowers, favoring xenogamy, which may explain the high genetic variability reported in J. curcas for this region of the world.
Author Comment
This is a reviewed version of the manuscript following suggestions and comments of reviewers.
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