Cryopreservation of pollen grains is an efficient technique to overcome asynchronous flowering and to support actions for genetic improvement and conservation of important alleles. It can be used both by germplasm curators and plant breeders. In the case of Bromeliaceae, a family with wide diversity but also high vulnerability, the form of conservation can be crucial to prevent the increasing problem of genetic erosion. This chapter describes a method of cryopreservation of pollen grains of different Bromeliaceae species, including pineapple, after dehydration with silica and subsequent immersion in liquid nitrogen. The efficiency of this protocol has been demonstrated by the high pollen viability percentage and production of seeds after in vivo pollination with cryopreserved grains. The protocol can be used for cryopreserving pollen of many species of bromeliads and is easy to perform.
Cryopreservation is a technique that allows the conservation of many species for long periods. Among the protocols used for cryopreservation, droplet vitrification has shown efficient results in preserving shoot tips of various wild and cultivated pineapple genotypes. The method consists of extraction of shoot tips from plants grown in vitro, dehydration for a period of 48 h in a preculture medium supplemented with a high concentration of sucrose, treatment in a plant vitrification solution (PVS2), and immersion in liquid nitrogen. The method described in this chapter has produced survival and regeneration indices of around 70%, depending on the genotype and physiological conditions of the initial explants. The objective of this chapter is to describe in detail a droplet vitrification protocol for shoot tips that is easy to perform for cryopreservation of pineapple germplasm.
The conservation of pineapple in urban backyards is an innovative strategy that aims to involve city residents. A program of this nature requires careful planning and monitoring because of the involvement of people who do not have technical knowledge. This paper reports the implementation and evaluation of 30 gardens in urban backyards in Cabaceiras do Paraguaçú, Bahia, Brazil, to establish the parameters to allow creating a model for pineapple germplasm conservation cells with the collaboration of urban residents. A questionnaire was applied in two steps to people interested in participating, from which it was possible to choose and evaluate a general profile of the participants. Thirty pineapple accessions from the Active Germplasm Bank (AGB) of the Embrapa were selected for testing in the gardens. Two production cycles were considered, during which quantitative and qualitative traits of the plants and fruits were evaluated. The data were compared with the characteristics of the same accessions in the Pineapple AGB and were analysed by mixed principal component analysis. With respect to adequate maintenance, 20 gardens were well cared for until the end of the assessments, five were reasonably well tended and five were lost, due to home remodelling or lack of care by the guardians. Despite the loss of the five gardens, no accession was totally lost, thanks to the experimental design with three plants of each accession in three different gardens. The plants preserved in the gardens did not differ from those maintained by the AGB, demonstrating the effectiveness of this conservation strategy.
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