Fruit Productivity and Morphological of Giant Corpse Flower [Amorphophallus titanum (Becc.) Becc. ex Arcang.]

Latifah, D., Sudarmono, H. Wawangningrum, S. Hartini, D.M. Puspitaningtyas and E. Munawaroh.  2014. Fruit Productivity and Morphological of Giant Corpse Flower [Amorphophallus titanum (Becc.) Becc. ex Arcang.].  Proceedings International Conference on Tropical Horticulture.  Published online in 2014 http://hortikultura.litbang.deptan.go.id/downloads/Buku%20IHTC%202013.pdf        ISBN: 978-979-8257-56-8

ABSTRACT

Amorphophallus titanum (Becc.) Becc. ex Arcang (the giant corpse flower; titan arum) is a relative to Aroids (taro/talas-talasan) which belongs to Araceae family. The gigantic inflorescences of these plant species have been iconic in Bogor Botanic Gardens. To date, these species have been promoted to be horticultural plants due to their functional-food potentials. The tubers of the titan arum contain more glucomannan than those of their relative, Amorphophallus konjac. Glucomannan is a dietary fiber that can be used as a dietary supplement to treat high cholesterol, constipation, obesity and diabetes. Therefore, studies on the hand pollination techniques, productivity and morphological characters of the fruit are essentials for cultivation practices in future. The bloom of A. titanum number VI.C.484 (origin: Lahat, South Sumatera) which opened on February 2^nd 2012 was pollinated manually using (stored) pollen taken from the other flower number VI.C.485 (the same origin) which bloomed on November 29^th 2011. The hand cross-pollination was successful and the first fruit (infructescence) to be produced here on February 22^nd 2012 marked the first success of manual pollination of the Titan Arum in Indonesia. The fruit begun to develop after one month, five months later the fruit were ripened. The number of the fruit was 215 at first recording but only 110 fruitlet left to ripe (51.16% productivity). The fruit dimension was varied between three infructescence zonation;  the length ranged 0.56 to 4.51 cm (F(2, 214)=0.44, p = 0.65) and the diameter was from 0.85 to 3.25 cm (F(2, 214)=2.69, p=0.07). While the fruit weight was different between zones due to their seed contents (F(2, 214)=3.23, p=0.04).  The weight  ranged  from 0.25 to 20.12 cm. The fruit contains 1-2 seed. 

Keywords: Amorphophallus titanum; Corpse giant inflorescence; Fruit; Hand pollination