Analyzing pollen in the greenhouse with updated analyzer

The viability of pollen plays a crucial role in plant breeding and seed production. In plant breeding, determining pollen viability, pollen amount, and pollen shed dynamics are important parameters for germplasm phenotyping. In seed production, manual pollination is costly and time-consuming, and the quality of pollen should be verified. Therefore, routine analysis and quality control of pollen are important to allocate resources and make data-driven decisions efficiently. Amphasys’ innovative technology facilitates systematic pollen analysis.

In 2021, Amphasys globally launched the next-generation pollen analyzer Ampha P20. The portable and fully autonomous instrument is the first device to enable pollen quality analysis outside the lab: in the greenhouse and in the field. This new generation of pollen analyzers furthermore provides an improved ease-of-use and completely automated data analysis.

“Viable pollen is crucial for obtaining high fruit and seed yields and for breeding new varieties which resist the environmental impacts of climate change. With our new instrument, we support our customers in breeding and seed production to obtain more, faster, and better information about pollen quality,” says Dr. Marcel Ottiger, CEO and Co-founder at Amphasys.

“Let me give you an example: for the first time, it is possible to measure short-lived pollen of crops like wheat and corn directly in the field! This is a huge improvement in hybrid breeding of these important staple crops as it allows systematic line characterization based on measurement data.”

“After a few years now of working together with Amphasys to provide our customers with cutting edge solutions and helping them grow their yields through the early determination of pollen viability, this instrument will now enable them to test out in the field… this is a very exciting development,” says Ronen Neutra, CEO and President of Neutec Group, the North American distribution arm for Amphasys products.

The new Ampha P20 is supplied with crop and application-specific microfluidic chips, which enable automated data analysis and immediate results.

Register here for an upcoming (June 15, 2022) ASHS webinar about “Heat Tolerance using Impedance Flow Cytometry.”