ABSTRACT
Pollination is an essential process in the lifecycle of most plants, and especially in higher plants such as fruit crops, as most of them require pollination to ensure proper fruit setting. Pollination is the basis of genetic reconstitution and creation of variabilities for making improvement and evolving new varieties. Pollination is the process of transfer of pollen grains from anther on to the stigma of same flower (self-pollination) or another flower of same plant species (cross-pollination). Self-pollinated plant species can produce fruits but their number and quality are often improved when cross-pollinated. Cross-pollination in crops has the potential to reduce loss and wastage of food so it could contribute to global food security (Klatt et al., 2014). To understand pollination biology in a fruit crop such as strawberry, it is essential to have knowledge of various pollination aspects such as floral biology, pollination requirement, effective pollination periods and the conditions, pollen germination, stigma receptivity, pollenizers, mode of pollination and pollinators.
