Plant Edders,
I just finished a pollen germination lab using the solution from:
http://www.zoo.utoronto.ca/able/volumes/vol-16/9-rscott/9-rscott.htm
The two flowering plants with nearly perfect germination were
California Poppy and Agapanthus. I had cut off the inflorescences the day
before and held the flowers overnight under a white florescent bulb light
bench with cut peduncles in a beaker of the pollen solution. The overnight
light treatment was apparently necessary because neither plants gave pollen
germination the day before when tested. I went into the lab expecting little
pollen germination.
Students held anthers with tweezers over a pie section of a sterile
10% agar plate and bumped the tweezers causing a shower of pollen over an
agar section. They then added a drop of fresh filter sterilized pollen
solution on top. Some pollen germinated on the agar without the
solution. I
suspect the bright light treatment was more important than the solution but
have not tested it under controlled conditions. It has also been cloudy and
rainy locally.
Students repeated the procedures adding a microbiological antibiotic
paper disk with chloramphenicol or penicillin into the pollen + solution
expecting pollen tube inhibition only near the chloramphenicol. Student
results were mixed but tube growth was less within an hour near the
chloramphenicol but normal and long near the penicillin paper disk. If
repeated I would place the disks on the plates a day early to allow
antibiotic diffusion into the agar. I did not do the elaborate tube length
calculations with image analysis nor use the antibiotic solutions suggested
in the ABLE exercise.
David
---
