Fruit Productivity And Morphological Characters Of Giant Corpse Flower [Amorphophallus Titanum (Becc.) Becc. Ex Arcang.]

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 2nd 2012 was pollinated manually using (stored) pollen taken from the other flower number VI.C.485 (the same origin) which bloomed on November 29th 2011. The hand cross-pollination was successful and the first fruit (infructescence) to be produced here on February 22nd 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 persen 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. Proceeding International Conference on Tropical Horticulture, Yogyakarta 2-4 October 2013. Page: 144-150 ISBN 978-979-8257-56-8