Abstract
'Pam' is a popular muscadine grape characterized with large fruit size, nice appearance, good flavor, and high disease resistance. This cultivar, however, requires pollinators since it is a pistillate cultivar. Our preliminary research has showed that fruit setting of a certain female muscadine variety is influenced by pollinators. To better understand the influence of pollen source on fruit set quality for 'Pam', three perfect-flower muscadine cultivars were used as pollinators and an open pollination was used as control. 'Nesbitt' pollination resulted in 100% fruit setting in cluster, while 'Noble' and 'Alachua' pollination produced 70% fruit set among the clusters. 'Nesbitt' pollination also increased fruit numbers per cluster by about 20% over 'Alachua' and 'Noble' pollination. No difference in fruit soluble solids content (SSC) was found among the fruits derived from different pollen sources.
