The influence of flowering plant isolation on seed production and seed quality in Orobanche cumana

Abstract

Rodríguez-Ojeda MI, Pérez-Vich B, Alonso LC & Fernández-Escobar J (2010). The influence of flowering plant isolation on seed production and seed quality in Orobanche cumana. Weed Research 50, 515–518. Summary Orobanche cumana is an important parasitic weed of sunflower. The objective of this research was to study seed production and seed quality in O. cumana using three different bag types to isolate flowering plants. Maximum seed production was obtained on unbagged plants (91.2 mg per plant), followed by micro-perforated transparent plastic bags (MPB) (84.2 mg per plant), white paper (46.5 mg per plant) and brown paper bags (37.5 mg per plant). Seed quality, measured as germination percentage and infectivity, did not differ between unbagged plants and plants isolated with MPB, whereas it was considerably reduced in plants isolated with paper bags. A second experiment studied bagging effect on controlled hybridisation. When using white paper bags and MPB, 45.2% and 60.1% of the emasculated and hand-pollinated flowers were fertilised, respectively, compared with 88.6% in unbagged plants. The data suggested that O. cumana plants produce seed under isolation, even though the bag type affects seed production and quality. These results will be useful for basic and applied research demanding O. cumana seed production under isolated conditions.