Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Learn More About Controlled Pollination

By David Jackson


Control-pollination is a scientific procedure that seeks to improve the quality of a plant and ensure that the offspring from the plant have quality genes. Controlled pollination is transferring pollen from a male plant species to a female plant for purposes of reproduction. A small amount of pollen is harvested from the male plant reproductive parts and put on the female parts; these procedures are mainly carried out in farms doing horticulture farming.

This form of pollen transfer is usually necessary when you want to maintain and establish a pedigree breeding population. The technique is also important in controlling inbreeding within a breeding population. This technique is also effective in crossbreeding and back-crossing among species. Generally, the technique is designed and managed in a special way to produce seeds that have greater genetic characteristics. The seeds produced also have a greater genetic uniformity compared to the plants that are spontaneously pollinated. Pollen contamination issues are also eliminated.

Normally, hand-pollination is deemed vital when a person wishes to have control over pollinating the flower and ascertain that they fruit. This is accomplished by painting the stigma using pollen obtained from a desired male flower. Usually, hand pollinating relies on the kind of flower hence the level of difficulty varies. Nevertheless, this will be dependent on the structure of flower that will be variant from species to species.

On the other hand, emasculation or removing the male part is usually necessary when control-pollinating the self-fertile species. This helps to eliminate self-contamination. However, there is no need to worry in the self-sterile species and, therefore, no need of emasculation. Again, this technique requires that pollen is available when the flowers are ready to be pollinated. Since this may not be easy, pollen should be collected earlier and stored.

Bagging is also vital during the pollinating operations. The recipient or female flowers need to be covered before flowering or anthesis in order to prevent the contamination of the stigma until the application of a desired pollen. The bags used have to be treated and are always semi-transparent. These bags are inserted over the tip of the shoots and need to be firmly fixed.

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.

Nature is unpredictable, and individuals must embrace hand pollinating techniques in their ventures. Hand pollinating gives a person the benefit of choosing the best quality of pollen for fertilization, and this leads to high yields.

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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