Pollen Morphology and Variability of Abies alba Mill. Genotypes from South-Western Poland

Dorota Wrońska-Pilarek,Maria Hauke-Kowalska,Jan Bocianowski,Kacper Lechowicz,Monika Dering,Władysław Barzdajn,Wojciech Kowalkowski

doi:10.3390/f11111125

Dorota Wrońska-Pilarek, Maria Hauke-Kowalska + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/f11111125

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Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate pollen morphology and ranges of intraspecific variability of Abies alba Mill. Pollen grains were collected from nine clonal seed orchards of A. alba in the Sudety Mountains, (South-Western Poland). At each seed orchard, 4–6 grafts were selected. Each individual (graft) was represented by 30 pollen grains and 1440 pollen grains were measured totally. Eight quantitative and four qualitative features of pollen grains were analysed. The diagnostic features of pollen grains for the studied species were: Exine surface of pollen corpus (cappa and leptoma) and sacci, the length of the polar axis (P), pollen shape (P/E ratio), and a new trait—saccus shape (A/B ratio — saccus width (A) to his length (B)). Pollen features made possible to differentiate seven individual genotypes (samples). To our knowledge, this is the first time that the intraspecific and interindividual variability of pollen grains of A. alba were investigated. The most different were the pollen grains from samples—genotypes 13 (Bystrzyca Kłodzka) and 18 (Jugów), and also (although to a lesser extent) genotypes—11 (Kamienna Góra), 30, 31 (Jugów), and 44 (Szklarska Poręba). No significant relationships were observed between the pollen grain traits and the geographical location of the collection sites.

Highlights

The production of pollen is a crucial stage of sexual reproduction in plants, involving the transfer of parental genes to offspring generations
Pollen dispersal distance affects pollination rate and seed crop is largely the function of intrinsic pollen grain characteristics that governs the physics of dispersion
The analysis was conducted on 48 genotypes of A. alba that grow in 9 native localities of the studied species in the Sudetes Mountains located in South-Western Poland

Summary

Introduction

The production of pollen is a crucial stage of sexual reproduction in plants, involving the transfer of parental genes to offspring generations. From a forestry perspective pollen production is the process that affects the amount and frequency of seed crops in economically important trees. By simplifying reproduction to the perspective of pollen donors only, the seed crop to a large extent depends on the pollen amount, its quality, and efficiency of the dispersal. In wind-pollinated plants, a majority being the European forest tree species, stochasticity of the pollination process evolutionarily has required the production of a large amount of pollen [1]. The size of pollen production, the dispersal distance, and pollen viability are all modified under environmental influence [2], which attains a special context under the observed climate transformation

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