Sodium thioglycollate enhances pollen germination and pollen tube elongation in cruciferous species

Abstract

Sodium thioglycollate is a reducing agent used in microbiological growth media to enhance the growth of anerobic, microaerophilic, and facultative organisms, and in eukaryotic tissue extraction buffers to inhibit damaging oxidative reactions. Sodium thioglycollate was added to a semi-solid pollen germination medium to evaluate its effects on in vitro pollen germination and pollen tube elongation, based on the assumption that conditions within stylar tissues are less aerobic than in ambient conditions. We observed significant increases in the percent germination and pollen tube elongation of both crop and weedy mustard family species, on a medium containing 2.2 mM sodium thioglycollate. This suggests that sodium thioglycollate may be a useful amendment to semi-solid media and to solutions that are used to study pollen vigor, physiology, or gene expression, and to bioassay sensitivities of different species or genotypes to diverse physical and chemical factors.

An improved embryo-rescue protocol for hybrid progeny from seedless Vitis vinifera grapes × wild Chinese Vitis species

“…Except under special conditions, there is a linear relationship between pollen germinability and viability in many fruit species (Dafni and Firmage 2000). Pollen germinability is also related to cultivar, nutritional conditions, and environmental factors (Parton et al 2002; Watrud et al 2011). Pollen samples from seven of the cultivars used in our breeding program were analyzed in vitro and showed significant differences among the cultivars in germination and growth (Table 1).…”