Factors influencing fecundity in experimental crosses of water lotus (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn.) cultivars

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Yan-Li Wang¹  Nian-Jun Teng¹  Wei-Min Fang¹  Fa-Di Chen¹  Chun-Qing Sun² 

[1] College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, 210095, Nanjing, China;College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, 210095, Nanjing, China;Zhenjiang Agricultural Research Institute, 212400, Jurong, Jiangsu, China;

关键词: Pollen Tube;    Embryo Development;    Pollen Germination;    Reciprocal Cross;    Pollen Viability;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-12-82

 received in 2011-12-16, accepted in 2012-05-22,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBreeding programs for the water lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) are hampered by an inability to account for variation in seed set associated with crosses between different cultivars. We studied seed set in two reciprocal crosses between lotus cultivars (‘Guili’ × ‘Aijiangnan’ and ‘Molingqiuse’ × ‘Qinhuaiyanzhi') to obtain insights into factors that govern fecundity in these experimental hybrids. Pollen viability, stigma receptivity and embryo development were compared for each hybrid and reciprocal cross.ResultsPollen viability of the individual cultivars ranged from 4.1% to 20.2%, with the highest level (>11.9%) for all cultivars observed from the earliest collected grains (05:00–06:00 a.m.). Stigmatic pollen germination peaked at 4 h after pollination and varied from 4.8 to 60.6 grains per stigma among the crosses. Production of normal embryos ranged from 7.6% to 58.8% at 1 d after pollination and from 0 to 25% by 11 d after pollination. Seed set in crosses (0.2–23.3%) was generally lower than in open-pollinated plants (8.4–26.5%). Similar to the germination results, seed set was substantially reduced in both reciprocal crosses.ConclusionsThese results suggested that poor pollen fertility, low stigma receptivity, and embryo abortion were responsible for the failure of the crosses ‘Molingqiuse’ × ‘Qinhuaiyanzhi’, ‘Qinhuaiyanzhi’ × ‘Molingqiuse’, and ‘Aijiangnan’ × ‘Guili’.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Teng et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.