Artificial pollination, pollen viability, and storage in white yam
1981
Akoroda, M.O. | Wilson, J.E. (International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan (Nigeria)) | Chheda, H.R. (University of Ibadan (Nigeria))
We pollinated white yam (Dioscorea rotundata) by hand using three techniques: a camel-hair brush was used to pick up and transfer pollen from anther to stigmas of open female flowers; a pointed tip of a bamboo splinter was used to excise anther from open male flowers and to insert them into open female flowers; and pollen suspension in an aqueous culture medium was dropped through a blunt-tipped 1-2-ml syringe into open female flowers. The brush technique was most effective and yielded 147 seeds per day compared with 49 and 11 for the splinter and the dropper techniques, respectively. The potentially high seed yield per day of the brush method resulted mainly from the high percentage of fruit set (27.8) and the large number (450) of flowers that could be pollinated in a day. When short-term pollen storage was studied, we found that the loss of viability was twice as rapid under field conditions as it was under room conditions where temperature and relative humidity (RH) were constant. Storage of pollen was compared at 26-30 degrees centigrade and 10 degrees centigrade and at 75-85, 80 and 0% RH; viability was best preserved at 10 degrees centigrade and 0% RH. No correlaion was found between fruit set from hand pollinations and in vitro germination with stored pollen from 20 genotypes (r=-0.12). The results of these studies should improve the effectiveness of controlled pollination in white yam and the short-term storage of pollen for crosses between parents whose flowerings do not coincide.
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