a lack of adequate annual chilling in temperate zone fruit growing trees, especially pistachio is a main problem observed in many areas with partly warm winters. usually this phenomenon results in disorders in vegetative and reproductive structures, decrease in production of pollen, falling of flower buds and decrease in or loss of fruit set. presently the use of some substitute chemical compou...

High temperatures during cotton flowering and early boll development can detrimentally affect cotton yield. Current commercial cultivars do not have pronounced tolerance to elevated temperatures, and improved methods of screening for thermo-tolerance are needed. The effect of heat stress on cotton has been measured with several different methods including membrane leakage, chlorophyll fluoresce...

Parthenocarpic fruit development (PFD) reduces fruit yield and quality in grapevine. Parthenocarpic seedless berries arise from fruit set without effective fertilization due to defective pollen germination. PFD has been associated to micronutrient deficiency but the relation of this phenomenon with pollen polymorphism has not been reported before. In this work, six grapevine cultivars with diff...

Flavonoids are synthesized by phenylpropanoid pathway. They are known to participate in large number of physiological and biochemical processes in plants. Parthenocarpy and male sterility has earlier been reported by silencing chalcone synthase (CHS) encoding gene. Silencing of CHS has blocked the synthesis of most of useful flavonoids including flavan-3-ols and flavonols. Also, these studies c...

In the Brassicaceae, intraspecific non-self pollen (compatible pollen) can germinate and grow into stigmatic papilla cells, while self-pollen or interspecific pollen is rejected at this stage. However, the mechanisms underlying this selective acceptance of compatible pollen remain unclear. Here, using a cell-impermeant calcium indicator, we showed that the compatible pollen coat contains signal...

It is possible to obtain pollen germination and pollen tube growth in vitro if boric acid is present. In this work the effect was studied using as a semiquantitative parameter the mean length (J) o f Lilium longißorum pollen tubes. Pollen tube growth was examinated in depend­ ence on boric acid, ortho-silicic acid, nucleic bases, Ca2+ and Zn2+ in 10% sucrose solution. The maximum o f 7is obtain...

The Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) sucrose transporter AtSUC1 (At1g71880) is highly expressed in pollen; however, its function has remained unknown. Here, we show that suc1 mutant pollen is defective in vivo, as evidenced by segregation distortion, and also has low rates of germination in vitro. AtSUC1-green fluorescent protein was localized to the plasma membrane in pollen tubes. AtSUC1 is...

The accumulation of phytic acid during development of lily (Lilium longiflorum Thunb.) pollen and its degradation during germination have been studied. A substantial amount of phytic acid accumulates in lily pollen by 5 days before anthesis, and little change occurs during subsequent maturation. Mature lily pollen contains 7 to 8 micrograms phytic acid per milligram pollen. Considerable degrada...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The arabinogalactan protein (AGP) gene family is involved in plant reproduction. However, little is known about the function of individual AGP genes in pollen development and pollen tube growth. In this study, Brassica campestris male fertility 8 (BcMF8), a putative AGP-encoding gene previously found to be pollen specific in Chinese cabbage (B. campestris ssp. chinensis), wa...