Jingwei Zhou¹ , Xiaomeng Wu¹ , Huijing Zhou¹ , Jianfeng Zou² , Haixia Chen¹

1 College of Horticulture, Hunan Agricultural University, Hunan Mid-subtropical Quality Plant Breeding and Utilization Engineering Technology Research Center, Changsha, 410128, China
2 Center of Analytical Service, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2022, Vol. 13, No. 14   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2022.13.0014
Received: 28 Apr., 2022    Accepted: 09 May, 2022    Published: 09 Jun., 2022

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Zhou J.W., Wu X.M., Zhou H.J., Zou J.F., and Chen H.X., 2022, Observation of pollen grains of ten Hydrangea varieties with scanning electron microscope (SEM), Molecular Plant Breeding, 13(14): 1-10 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2022.13.0014)

In order to analysis the difference in pollen morphological characteristics of the hydrangea varieties and pollen fertility, scanning electron microscope was used to observe the pollen characteristics of 10 varieties of hydrangea, parameters of pollen grains such as shape, the ratio of long and short axes, germination groove, ornamentation and polar surface characteristics. In Observe the characteristics of pollen grain shape, aspect ratio, germination groove, ornamentation, polar surface and other characteristics of the 10 Hydrangea macrophylla through electron microscope scanning to analyze the differences between different Hydrangea varieties and pregnancy pollen grains sex. The results indicated that the pollen grains of the fertile flowers of 10 Hydrangea are all long spherical, except for the sterile flowers of ‘Endless summer’ and ‘Otaksa’, all the others are long spheroids. The all have with three germinating grooves, which are long splitting into to the germination grooves of the poles. The pollen belonging to the N3P4C5 type pollen, the polar face shapes of pollen grains were different in and the outer wall decoration is hole-shaped. But only the ‘Endless summer’ and ‘Otaksa’ infertility flowers were super-long spheres. The polar faces of pollen grains have different shapes, such as ‘Endless Summer’, ‘Otaksa’, ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘Head Flower’ and ‘First Love’ are trilobate circulares, others are blunt triangles. The length and ridge width of germination groove of different varieties were also different, and only the different pregnant pollen grains of ‘Maman rose’ had significant differences. The size, shape and distribution of the pores are different, but the morphological characteristics of different fertile pollen grains of the same variety are not different. In conclusion, the external walls decoration of pollen grains can be used as one of the basis for the identification of Hydrangea varieties, but not for the identification of pollen fertility. The length of the germination groove of different varieties of pollen grains differs from the width of the ridge surface of the germination groove, as well as the size, shape and distribution characteristics of the holes. However, there is no significant difference in the morphological characteristics of the outer wall decoration patterns of different pregnancy pollen grains of the same variety.

Hydrangea macrophylla; Pollen morphology; SEM; Cultivar identification