TIPOS DE POLINIZAÇÃO E PASTEJO DA ABELHA Xylocopa spp. NA FRUTIFICAÇÃO E QUALIDADE DOS FRUTOS DE MARACUJAZEIRO

The productivity of passion fruit in Maranhão State, Brazil, is very low, because the deficient utilization of technologies by the smallholders. The present study was carried out to evaluate the effect of polli- nation on the fruiting set and fruit quality, and the frequency of visiting on flowers of carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) on passion fruit species Passiflora edulis Sims f. flavicarpa Deg. And Passiflora edulis Sims f. edulis).The treatments of field experiment was formed by the methods of pollination: opened, controlled and manual, using six flowers per plant in five plants of the two passion fruit forms. The frequency of visiting of Xylocopa spp. to the flowers was taken in five intervals of time. The controlled and manual pollination pre- sented higher fruit set per plant in the two passion fruit forms. In the monitoring of visiting, the flowers of yel- low passion received a greater number of visitors from 14 h and in purple passion fruit the visits were retarded in one hour. The frequency of visiting of carpenter bees to the flowers of yellow passion fruitis closely related to the provision of flowers per plant. The manual pollination ofyellow passion fruit resulted fruits with higher total weight, mass of pulp and seed number in relation to opened pollination. Different results were verified to purple passion fruit