Liza Chen, Ying-Tung Lin, and Yuan Lin |
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Introduction Momordica charantia, known as bitter melon or bitter gourd, is widely grown in Taiwan. The bitter melon is monoecious with male and female flowers borne separately on the same plant. It produces an abundance of male flowers each day, but only a limited number of female flowers can be found on the same plant. Apparently, the gourd yield is determined by the number of successfully pollinated female flowers. Pollen loses viability as the day advances and may be fully unviable by midday (Desai & Musmade, 1998, as cited in Morgan, W., & Midmore, D., 2002). It typically takes about 15 – 20 days after the fruit set to reach a marketable age (Reyer et al., 1994, as cited in Morgan, W., & Midmore, D., 2002). Fruits increase in bitterness with time due to a build-up of the alkaloid momordicine, and then lose its bitterness during ripening (Cantwell et al., 1996, as cited in Morgan, W., & Midmore, D., 2002). If the physiologically mature fruit is left on the vine, it will influence the ripening and senescence of fruits within its vicinity regardless of size. The seedlings of bitter melons are flood-intolerant and luffa rootstock is more resistant to flooding (Liao & Lin, 1996, as cited in Morgan, W., & Midmore, D., 2002). It will be better for them to be grafted onto the flood-tolerant luffa root stock and grafting can also increase yield substantially in Taiwan due to Fusarium wilt control (Lin et al., 1998, as cited in Morgan, W., & Midmore, D., 2002)
In 1989, Mr. Yuan Lin discovered the Absolutely Constant Energy Source (ACES). ACES is the universal constant of all entities. It cannot be produced or destroyed, nor can it be increased or decreased. It doesn’t have any forms and cannot be changed, but permeates everything and everywhere. ACES acts as the energy source to construct the most fundamental forms of all and everything, including time and space, the universe and its background. It can convert energy into mass or mass into energy. Unlike other kinds of action forces or catalysts, it will not be consumed or altered in the process of reactions. ACES does not have unique specificity to catalyze specific reactions or induce specific structures. However, it broadly affects physical variations and chemical reactions. The progressive process of constituent energy for all and every events and phenomena can take place only with the participation of this energy source ( www.cahe.org.tw).
Figures 3 and 4 show the total number of female flowers and the total gourd weight on the vines for both the treatment group and the control group respectively. The first female flower appeared on April 18 (42 days after planting) in the treatment group, while the first female flower appeared on April 30 (54 days after planting) in the control group, by which time there were already 7 female flowers born in the treatment group. There is significant difference between these two groups (p=0.000, table 1). For the treatment group, a maximum of 18 female flowers were found on May 24 and, in the meanwhile, there were 5 mature gourds harvested and their total weight was 1860 grams.
Table 1. Statistical analysis of the total number of new female flowers between two groups
As the plants in the control group had 10 more days of growth than the treatment group, they carried a larger leaf area to support a maximum of 21 gourds between May 22 and May 25, and their total weight was 2776 to 2981 grams, whereas in the treatment group, a smaller leaf area was developed and only a maximum of 18 gourds were found on May 24 since the plants were forced to initiate flowering at an earlier time. During the period of June 5 through June 11, the maximum total weight of bitter gourd was 3305 grams, but the number of fruits on vines was only 13 to 15. There is significant difference between these two groups (p=0.001, table 2).
Table 2. Statistical analysis of the total harvested gourd weight between two groups
In order to support the existing fruits on the vine, there was no occurrence of new female flowers between May 26 and June 17 in the control group, but this happened in the treatment group only between May 24 and June 4. The observation of new female flowers would be terminated for both the control group and the treatment group when the total female flowers in each group reached 45. And this was observed on July 1 in both groups. However, the measurement of fruit weight continued until all existing gourds reached marketable size. Figure 5 shows the accumulative marketable yield for both the control group and the treatment group during the experiment. The accumulative harvested fruit weight of the treatment group was found to always surpass that of the control group in the experiment. It is interesting to note that bitter melon has its internal mechanism to regulate the occurrence of female flowers so that the photosynthetic reserves can sufficiently support the existing fruits.
The Absolutely Constant Energy Source can induce early flowering of bitter melon (p=0.000), increasing mature gourd yield (p=0.001), but the total number of female flowers may not be affected. From the experiment data, we can observe that the number and the appearance of female flowers seem to be determined by the size of the leaf area or the photosynthetic reserve and that early flowering results in higher marketable yield.
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