Pollen Quality in Woody Plants in the City Parks of Dnipro, Ukraine

Abstract

Abstract. This research was conducted to study pollen quality in woody plants in the city parks of Dnipro, which are located at various distances from the sources of anthropogenic pollution. It has been revealed that sterile pollen in its greatest abundance was present in plant species in the Park of Memory and Reconciliation and Molodyozhny park, as both are situated within the range of emission transfer from the Western Industrial Complex, while the least abundant sterile pollen was detected in the park named after Yu. Gagarin and that named after V. Dubinin. According to sterility indices, the pollen in Betula pendula Roth. and that in Acer platanoides L. were most sensitive to environmental pollution. In the city parks, the amounts of shrunk and abnormally shaped pollen grains increases; giant forms with grain diameters exceeding standard, as well as dwarf forms are not rare in occurrence. The highest percentage of pollen grains of atypical shape and size was observed in the same parks where the pollen sterility index had its highest values.

Bioindication of megalopolis park ecosystems under aerotechnogenic loading

“…Cuinica et al (2015) indicated that even at low levels of pollutants below the standard level of safety for human health, pollen viability decreased to 25%. The total amount of teratomorphic pollen increased with increasing concentration of air pollutants and reached 11.1% (Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Petrushkevуch and Korshуkov 2020). The percentage of natural polymorphism of pollen grains in plants under favourable conditions usually does not exceed 5%-10% and rarely exceeds 20% (Dzyuba 2006;Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016).…”

“…The total amount of teratomorphic pollen increased with increasing concentration of air pollutants and reached 11.1% (Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Petrushkevуch and Korshуkov 2020). The percentage of natural polymorphism of pollen grains in plants under favourable conditions usually does not exceed 5%-10% and rarely exceeds 20% (Dzyuba 2006;Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016). In our studies, the amount of teratomorphic pollen reached 41.4% and increased with increasing concentration of contaminants (r = 0.76).…”

“…In our studies, the amount of teratomorphic pollen reached 41.4% and increased with increasing concentration of contaminants (r = 0.76). The share of fertile pollen grains decreased by 11%-26% with increasing concentration of air pollutants (Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Petrushkevуch and Korshуkov 2020). The share of fertile pollen near the parks in Kyiv decreased with an increase in aerotechnogenic load on an average by 11% (r = 0.72).…”

“…In Europe, North America and China, tree species, herbaceous, including Taraxacum officinale Web., are used as indicators of the state of urban environ-ment (Leghari et al 2018;Martines 2018;Zajecka and Świercz 2021). In studies of the impact of air pollutants and heavy metals on the environment, various plant indicators are used, in particular, palynoindication (Cuinica et al 2014(Cuinica et al , 2015Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Leghari et al 2018;Petrushkevych and Korshykov 2020;Mazura et al 2020;Bessonova and Sklyarenko 2020), life status of plantations (Nock et al 2013;Vieira et al 2018;Rybakova and Glazunov 2020;Vacek et al 2020;Jaung et al 2020), the level of defoliation of the crown (Vacek et al 2020;Miroshnyk 2018), leaf damage (chlorosis-necrosis) (Miroshnyk 2018; Pietras-Couffignal and Robakowski 2019), changes in anatomy, content and ratio of photosynthetic pigments (Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Suskalo 2018), enzymes (Suskalo 2018) and other physiological processes. The correlation between the concentrations of NO x , SO 2 and the number of passing cars and defoliation of trees (Vacek et al 2020) have been established.…”

“…Impact of soil pollution by heavy metals on vegetation in parks have been associate with the number of cars on the roads (Kijewska et al 2016;Khan et al 2016;Ali et al 2017;Gąsiorek et al 2017;Mazura et al 2020). Air pollutants in the concentration from 1 maximum allowable concentration (MAC) and above cause necrosis on the leaves, reduce the linear growth of shoots, reduce the age of needles in conifers, shorten the life of trees (Nikolaevsky 1998;Polyakova and Gutnikov 2000;Vieira et al 2018;Rybakova and Glazunov 2020) and destroy the pigment complex of plants (Ivanchenko and Bessonova 2016;Mazura et al 2020;Pietras-Couffignal and Robakowski 2019). Therefore, for plants, normalisation of the content of air pollutants is lower than for humans (Nikolaevsky 1998;Furdychko et al 2008).…”