I. Development of suspension media

Abstract

A number of aqueous solutions were evaluated as possible pollen carriers for the spray pollination of fruit trees. The viability of apple, kiwifruit, oil palm, and plum pollen was markedly reduced after pollen was suspended in water. This loss of viability could be partly overcome by slow hydration of the pollen in moist air before its suspension. The viability of hydrated oil palm and kiwifruit pollen after suspension in calcium nitrate solution of low concentration with or without boric acid, was similar to that of hydrated pollen germinated directly. Similar results were obtained with apple and plum pollens, provided that pentaerythritol was added to the suspension medium. However, the viability of apple , kiwifruit, and plum pollen that had been suspended in these media was substantially reduced during drying on a simulated stigma surface. For kiwifruit, the loss of pollen viability after drying could be partially overcome by the further addition of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, with or without sodium alginate, to the suspension medium.

Artificial pollination on hazelnut in South Africa: preliminary data and perspectives

“…The novel membrane integrity method proved to be essential in finalizing the medium. The solution should be composed of at least a sugar source and a stabilizer (Hopping and Jerram, 1980;Sakamoto et al, 2009). Two media were tested and both were able to maintain pollen viability.…”

Artificial Pollination Technologies: A Review

“…Entomophilous plants (pollinated by insects) typically produce less pollen, making collection more challenging. Anthers can be manually excised from individual flowers-an approach employed in artificial pollination research [36,37], but the method is labour-intensive and is economical only for small-scale application (e.g., breeding programmes, vanilla and cacao pollination). Larger-scale pollination was enabled by methods of mechanically separating pollen from whole flowers for kiwifruit [15,23,38,39], cherimoya [30], date palm [22,28], and almond [40].…”

“…• Suitable aqueous carrier solutions have been demonstrated for kiwifruit [36], cherry [70], pear [71,72], pistachio [32], and date palm [28], but new solutions must be created, or customized, and validated for each crop.…”