Pollen viability of date palm from different sources in relation to its chemical composition

Abstract EN

This study was undertaken to determine pollen viability for nine pollen grain sources of date palm from three sites in Arab Republic of Egypt using staining and germination methods, in addition, to recording the differences in the chemical composition i.e., total carbohydrates, protein and amino acids, as well as, the relationship between them.

This experiment was carried out to select the amino acids that can be used in the future to improve pollen viability and to increase productivity of date palm using suitable male palms by modern methods.

Therefore, three selected males from three sites in three governorates i.e., El-Behira, El-Fayoum and Sohag were chosen for this study.

Results showed that pollen grains brought from Rasheed , El Behera governorate (M1) produced the highest staining and germination percentages (91 and 84 %, respectively), as well as the highest protein content of 31.21% .

Similarly M1 had the highest lysine and serine content (6.41 and 4.80, respectively), as compared to the other pollen sources.

There was a highly positive correlation between both stained and germinated pollens with the arginine content (r = 0.693 and 0.700) respectively.

The principal component analysis was performed to clarify the relationship between the evaluated variables i.e.

chemical composition revealed that the first four components (PCA1, PCA2, PCA3 and PCA4) accounted for more than 83% of the total variations for the variables.

The biplot showed that there was a high correlation between the stained, germinated pollen grains and the content of lysine and arginine.