Self life of pollen

[sprtsguy76]

Making some homemade crosses and wanted to know how long the pollen I'm using stays vital. I've been storing it indoors at about 60-75 degrees. Pollen is now three or four days old. Should I emasculate more flowers for more pollen or is this three to four day old stuff still good. Thanks.

Damon

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by sprtsguy76

Making some homemade crosses and wanted to know how long the pollen I'm using stays vital. I've been storing it indoors at about 60-75 degrees. Pollen is now three or four days old. Should I emasculate more flowers for more pollen or is this three to four day old stuff still good. Thanks.

Damon

Damon, I just answered your question about this at GW so will do the same here. There are lots of links about tomato pollen viability if you Google it but this one seemed best to me.

http://tgc.ifas.ufl.edu/vol1/v1p11.html

And if you're just starting out doing crosses folks here can no doubt help but Keith Mueller has some excellent directions at his website if you want me to post that link as well.

[travis]

Damon, when you say "emasculate more flowers for more pollen" do you mean you are removing the anther cones as a means of gathering pollen?

If so, do you then dry the anther cones and sieve the pollen out of them, or is there some other way you extract the pollen from the anther cones after you remove them?

Are you subsequently using the same flowers that have been emasculated as recipients for other pollen in your crossing?

What is your time frame for emasculating the flowers. I mean how mature are they when you remove the anther cones for collecting pollen?

And if you are emasculating the flowers of the pollen recipients, what stage of maturity are those flowers that you are emasculating in preparation for becoming pollen recipients?

Carolyn's link gives excellent information. I've been using the following link as a guide for how to prepare flowers and gather pollen for crossing. I think the pollen collecting information is on the 7th slide in this presentation: http://www.avrdc.org/LC/tomato/hybrid/09pollen.html

[sprtsguy76]

Thanks Carolyn and Travis.

I think I got the answers I needed about pollen storage and shelf life. And yes I have read Keith's valuable read on crossing tomatoes, actually I've read it several times.

Damon

[carolyn137]

Travis, here's the website of Keith's that I was referring to above and I think you might find it useful in addition to what you already have.

On the home page click on CULTURE and scroll down to the link on crossing tomatoes.

Lots of other good info there as well.

http://www.kdcomm.net/%7Etomato/index.html