Saturday, June 10, 2017

What You Need To Know About Controlled Pollination

By David Jackson


Basically, control-pollination is a technique that is often used in plant improvement so as to produce offspring or progeny with genes from two known plants. Therefore, Controlled Pollination involves transferring the pollen from a plant to the receptive female organs of another plant and all other pollen are excluded. This practice is commonly practiced in horticulture, as well as in genetic experiments.

This kind of pollen transfer remains to be utilized in situations where individuals want to retain or establish some good breeding population. In addition, the technique is considered essentials in the control of inbreeding in breeding the populations of grown plants. The technique as well remains effective when conducting back-crossing or crossbreeding among species. Normally, such techniques are implemented and run in special ways that produce seeds with superior genetic characteristics. The resultant seeds as well have better genetic uniformity as opposed to plants which undergo spontaneous crosspollination apart from the elimination of pollen contamination issues.

Usually, hand-pollination is usually necessary when you want to control pollination in a flower and ensure it gives fruits. To accomplish this, you just need to paint the stigma with pollen from the male flower. Hand pollinating usually depend on the type of flower, where it can be simple in others and difficult in others. However, this depends on the flower structure that usually vary with different species.

Contrarily, the removal of male parts or emasculation can be carried out in instances where control-pollinating has been done. This essentially aids in the elimination of self-contamination. Nevertheless, there is never a need to be apprehensive about self-sterile species thus emasculation may not be necessary. Also, the technique calls for pollen transfers to be undertaken only when flowers are ready for pollinating. Because this remains challenging, the pollens ought to be collected and stored much earlier.

At the same time, bagging is an essential requirement in all pollinating operations. The female or the receptive flowers should be covered prior to anthesis or flowering so as to protect the stigma from contamination until the desired pollen is applied. Usually, the bags used are the semi-transparent treated bags. The bags are used by placing them over the shoot tip. They should be firmly fitted to ensure they are secure.

With the right factors, natural pollination should occur. Factors such as ideal temperature allow plants to pollinate naturally. The bees in the farms are also excellent pollinators agents, and they get attracted to the most colorful flower. You can, however, not depend on bees because their population is dependent on weather condition.

But when pollinating is controlled, growers are able to time application of the compatible pollen and, therefore, will not have to depend on the nature that cannot be predicted. On the other hand, trees that require crosspollination may be pollinated even when the pollinating neighbors are not flowering.

Pollens can as well be applied efficiently via various techniques. Ideally, control techniques in pollinating flowers remain essential to the breeding of plants and in producing hybrid seeds. Though many techniques are relied on under the control method, the kind of crop picked will determine the choice of method to be utilized. However, mechanical pollinating methods are widely used despite being labor-intensive and time-consuming.




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