Pollen Viability of Date Palm from Different Sources in Relation to its Chemical Composition

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Pomology Department, Faculty of Agriculture (El-Shatby), Alexandria Univ., Egypt

2 Faculty of Desert and Environmental Agriculture Fuka, Matrouh, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

This study was undertaken to determine pollen viability for nine pollen grain sources of date palm from three sites in
Arab Republic of Egypt using staining and germination methods, in addition, to recording the differences in the chemical
composition i.e., total carbohydrates, protein and amino acids, as well as, the relationship between them. This experiment
was carried out to select the amino acids that can be used in the future to improve pollen viability and to increase
productivity of date palm using suitable male palms by modern methods. Therefore, three selected males from three sites
in three governorates i.e., El-Behira, El-Fayoum and Sohag were chosen for this study. Results showed that pollen grains
brought from Rasheed , El Behera governorate (M1) produced the highest staining and germination percentages (91 and
84 %, respectively), as well as the highest protein content of 31.21% . Similarly M1 had the highest lysine and serine
content (6.41 and 4.80, respectively), as compared to the other pollen sources. There was a highly positive correlation
between both stained and germinated pollens with the arginine content (r = 0.693 and 0.700) respectively. The principal
component analysis was performed to clarify the relationship between the evaluated variables i.e. chemical composition
revealed that the first four components (PCA1, PCA2, PCA3 and PCA4) accounted for more than 83% of the total
variations for the variables. The biplot showed that there was a high correlation between the stained, germinated pollen
grains and the content of lysine and arginine.

Keywords