Style length and flower morphology of three eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) cultivars from Iran affected by fruit load

A common feature of eggplant is its heterostyly. Long-style flowers bear fruits whereas short style ones fail to do so. Heterostyly is influenced by some factors such as genotype, climatic conditions and fruit load. In this study three eggplant cultivars from Iran were cultivated under greenhouse condition. The influence of presence of fruit (two fruits and four fruits) or absence of that on style length and some other flower morphological was studied in three positions of single, basal and additional. The presence of fruit, specially four fruits reduced style length, stigma width as well as mass of flower, pistil and stigma compared to the control in all times during fruit growth, and after fruit harvest they increased again. Fruit load didn’t affect the number of stamen and stamen length. These effects were observed in all three positons of single, basal and additional flowers of all three cultivars. Generally this study showed that fruit load has decreasing effect on style length and size of flowers forming after fruit setting, which reversed after fruit harvesting.