Excerpt from “Saving your own vegetable seeds—a guide for farmers”. This fact sheet was written by Sutevee Sukprakarn, Sunanta
Juntakool and Rukui Huang of Katsesart University and Tom Kalb of AVRDC. AVRDC Publication No. 06-659.
Published by AVRDC—The World Vegetable Center; P.O. Box 42, Shanhua; Taiwan 74151; ROC. April 2006.
tel: (886-6) 583-7801; fax: (886-6) 583-0009; email: avrdcbox@avrdc.org; web: www.avrdc.org
Saving Seeds of Eggplant
Production
Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is
a warm season crop. It requires a
long and warm growing season for
successful production. It is more
susceptible to lower temperatures
than tomato and pepper. A day
temperature of 25–32 °C and a night
temperature of 21–27 °C are ideal
for seed production.
Isolation
Eggplants produce perfect flowers,
which may be cross-pollinated, but
self-pollination is more common.
The extent of natural crossing
depends upon insect activity. To
avoid this, isolate each variety by
20 m or with another tall, flowering
crop. Another way is to bag a few
flowers from each plant to exclude
insects. Tie the paper bag onto the
flowers before they open and remove
as soon as the fruits are set. If there
is only one variety of eggplant being
grown, isolation is not needed.
Selection
Select the most vigorous and
healthy plants, mark fruits on the
second branch, and leave them until
they are fully mature. Keep one or
two fruits from one plant and several
fruits from different plants of the
same variety to maintain crop vigor.
Harvesting
Harvesting is done when fruits are
fully ripe (the skin of fruit turns
brownish-yellow in green varieties or
brownish in purple varieties) (Fig. 1).
Harvest and store the fruits in a shed
for a week until the fruits get soft.
seeds will sink to the bottom. The
seeds should then be dried on a
mesh for a couple of weeks in a cool,
dry place before storage.
Storage
Dried seeds can be safely stored for
at least three years. Place seeds in
jars, manila envelopes, cloth or
mesh bags, plastic containers, or
foil envelopes. The best co