Different Floral Diversities of Garcinia indica Species and the Correlation of Their Functionality in Sexual Reproduction

Genus Garcinia shows high diversity of sexual systems as most species are dioecious in nature. Reported sexual systems of Garcinia include gynodioecious, androdioecious, monoecious and andromonoecious. Garcinia indica (Thouars) Choisy was reported as facultative apomictic polygamodioecious species. G. indica exhibits large diversity in floral types. As a result, systematic research of distinct floral types seen on different types of G. indica plants was done, with the goal of associating their functioning with sexual reproduction. The study carried out at Kokum Plot, BSSKVV, Dapoli. It revealed that the male plants could be categorised into four floral types - androecious, functional males, andromonoecious and hermaphrodites. The flowers on female plants exhibited large variation in number and viability of stamens/staminodes. Each category showed significant difference in phenology, floral morphology, and pollen types. In December, the percentage of staminate flowers (79.13±2.93%) in androecious trees was significantly higher than functional males (58.61±8.60%) or andromonoecious trees (56.36±2.77%) (p
0.01). As female plants started flowering, all male morphotypes bore significantly higher numbers of staminate flowers and carpellate flowers were significantly reduced. Pollen viability was maximum in androecious flowers at 90.11±1.10% and minimum at 64.70±2.09% in hermaphrodite trees. Earlier studies reported that the female flowers bore well-developed female gametophyte, but well-developed embryo development was not observed. Thus, the fruit formation might be apomictic. In present investigation; a globular embryo was seen in more than 60% of female and andromonoecious flowers between 8-24 hours after anthesis but further developmental stages like were not detected. G. indica shows typical Garcinia type of embryogenesis with the embryo appears as a long hypocotyl-radicle axis with vestigial cotyledons.