Youngsters learn traditional date palm pollination

The date palm is one of the rare exceptions that requires pollination via an external agent. So nationals of old adopted a manual technique which has been passed on to their youngsters.

Ahmed Saeed, an elderly farmer, said in the past farmers used to monitor hundreds of male palm trees to find the best one to use for pollinating the female tree.

The extraction of the pollen involves several stages. First, the male flowers are removed from the male palm which is called Al fahl. These flowers are put together in a bundle and placed in the spadix of the tree to pollinate the female flowers.

He said recent research has resulted in advanced techniques such as automatic machine pollination, but this is in essence no different from the traditional technique. Saeed says the manual pollination of the palm tree can give bigger and better date production.

He praised the present generation that has been trying to learn the manual pollination techniques from the older farmers.

He stressed that nationals should mark the pollination season as an occasion for great joy and celebration, just as some Arab nations celebrate an olive harvest.

He said even the older farmers had come to the conclusion that the sugar palm was ideal since the viability of its pollen was as high as 97 per cent.

Although automatic pollination could cover nearly 200 trees a day, when it comes to the 'blessed' palm tree, it would be preferable to do it the traditional way, feels Saeed.