Studies on pollen viability in cardamom.

Abstract

Although 85.2% of cardamom pollen grain appeared fertile in the acetocarmine test, the maximum germination in artificial media containing 20% sucrose and 1% agar solution was only 70%. Similar results were obtained when a stigma was dusted with fresh pollen grains. Only 6.5% of the pollen grains remained viable after 2 h storage and none after 6 h storage. Testing the viability of cardamom pollen may be done either by the germination of pollen in vitro or by estimating the fruit set after dusting receptive stigmas with pollen.