Propagation of Cycad Collections from Seed

Abstract

Propagation of cycads from seed can aid their conservation as it helps reduce the demand for wildcollected plants. Seed-produced plants can be used for reintroduction programmes if the parent plants are from known provenance and care is taken to avoid hybridisation. This paper discusses the techniques required for successful seed propagation of cycads, including pollen collection, storage, viability testing, manual pollination, seed collection, storage and germination.