First Steps in the Successful Fertilization of Rice and Arabidopsis: Pollen Longevity, Adhesion and Hydration

Abstract

Understanding the behavior of pollen during pollination is important for food security in the future. The elucidation of pollen development and growth regulation largely relies on the study of the dicotyledonous model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. However, rice (Oryza sativa) pollen exhibits different characteristics to that of Arabidopsis. The latter undergoes programmed dehydration and withstands adverse environmental conditions, whereas rice pollen is sensitive to desiccation. Moreover, the short longevity of rice pollen significantly hampers hybrid seed production. Although the “omics” data for mature rice pollen have been accumulated, few genes that control pollination and pollen hydration have been identified. Therefore, to facilitate future studies, it is necessary to summarize the developmental processes involved in pollen production in rice and to consolidate the underlying mechanisms discovered in previous studies. In this review, we describe the pollen developmental processes and introduce gametophytic mutants, which form defective pollen in Arabidopsis and rice. In addition, we discuss the perspectives on the research on pollen longevity, adhesion and hydration.

PALD encoding a lipid droplet‐associated protein is critical for the accumulation of lipid droplets and pollen longevity in Arabidopsis

“…The thin wall of rice pollen grains is associated with their short longevity. By contrast, Arabidopsis pollen longevity is related to factors determining the timing of germination onset (Moon & Jung, 2020). For example, Arabidopsis NAD + ‐lacking pollen grains showed precocious germination inside the anther locule and shortened longevity after release (Hashida et al ., 2013).…”

Transcriptome Analysis of Triple Mutant for OsMADS62, OsMADS63, and OsMADS68 Reveals the Downstream Regulatory Mechanism for Pollen Germination in Rice (Oryza sativa)

“…Calcofluor white stains cellulose and is used to identify the intine layer of pollen grains [ 33 , 45 ]. In addition, since the intine layer of the pollen wall is composed of cellulose and pectin, we can say that of OsMADStri is abnormal [ 46 ]. The size of OsMADStri pollen grain was similar to that of WT pollen; it was the form of an intact sphere, and the anther dehiscence occurred normally.…”

Mapping chromosomal regions associated with anther indehiscence with exerted stigmas in CRI-48 and Jasmine 85 cross of rice (Oryza sativa L)

“…Over 20 genes have been reported to be involved in regulating anther dehiscence in plants (Keijzer, 1987;Goldberg et al, 1993;Matsui et al, 1999;Ma, 2005;Kobayashi et al, 2011;Wilson et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2011;Peng et al, 2013;Ling et al, 2015;Cardarelli and Costantino, 2018;Estornell et al, 2018;Moon and Jung, 2020). For rice, Zhu et al (2004) mapped anther indehiscence gene (aid1) on chromosome 6 using a two-element iAc/Ds transposon-tagging system.…”