4.6. Fruit Production

All fruits were harvested when they reached a length of 18 cm or one month after the end of the pollination treatments, whichever indicated maturity, beyond this length, or after one month when fruits began to turn yellow and decay [52]. All the fruits were recorded after the pollination experiment. Some female flowers produce fruits even when they are not pollinated, so we also harvested the fruits of the control group that are not pollinated. At harvest, the date, fresh mass of fruits (fruit yield) per plant, fresh weight of per fruit, length, and diameter of each fruit were recorded. Then, the fruits were cut in half length-wise, the seeds visible in both halves were counted, and this value was averaged, first per fruit and then per plant [30]. The seed counts were used to evaluate the ability of the fruit to produce seeds. Fruit set was calculated as the proportion of female flowers that produced fruit. Fruit yield, fruit length, diameter, and seed counts were averaged per plant so that each plant could be treated as a unit of replication. In addition, in order to further explore whether plants exhibit plasticity regulation between reproductive growth and vegetative growth in response to nutrients and pollination treatment, we harvested the aboveground portion of plant. After fruit harvest, all the above-ground parts of the plants were harvested, air-dried in sunlight for 15 days, and weighed as shoot mass.