Being involved in numerous Technology Implementation Projects in many companies, I realized that the individual pollen supply chains for a given crop are often fairly similar, and that the main challenges the production researchers are tackling are common too. With my posts I try to condense my impressions gathered over many years in many countries and provide useful ideas for experiments, practical recipes and suggestions for process optimization.
by Silvan Kaufmann
In my previous blog post on ‘How Pollen Quality Affects Seed Set’, we discussed the characterization of the pollination process, a key step in Solanaceae and Cucurbitaceae hybrid seed production. That post was focused on a deeper understanding of pollination. Now, we go a step further and make use of that knowledge.
The key questions of this post are:
- If there is a pollen quality threshold to achieve a good seed set, what does that mean for our in-house pollination routine?
- What is a pollination recipe and how does it look like?
- How can we optimize pollen consumption?
In the following sections, we will highlight the benefits of systematic pollen analysis. Based on cross-specific pollen and seed yield data we will derive practical and easy-to-read pollination recipes. Those recipes aim at ensuring sufficient pollination and preventing waste of precious pollen.
Looking at your own processes today, do you think you get the maximum out of them?