Abstract
Treating pollen with mutagens prior to controlled pollination may facilitate the production of mutant trees for developmental studies and eventual plantation improvement. To establish a suitable dose of the chemical mutagen ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) for the testing of this hypothesis, pollen of Eucalyptus globulus ssp. globulus and E. grandis was studied in vitro. Pollen germination, pollen tube elongation and generative cell division were examined after 48 h of culture, following exposure to between 0 and 1,000 ppm EMS. Doses of 600 to 1,000 ppm EMS reduced pollen germination in vitro in both species. Doses of up to 1,000 ppm EMS were not observed to significantly impact on either pollen tube length, or generative cell division in vitro of either species. A dose of 600 ppm EMS in paraffin oil is predicted to induce mutation in Eucalyptus species whilst impacting minimally on seed production based on the effect on pollen germination.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dr. Steve Read of Forestry Tasmania for technical advice on pollen culture, and to Paul Warburton of CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products, Canberra, for generously providing pollen from E. grandis clone 00043 for this work.
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Communicated by W. Oßwald.
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McManus, L.J., Sasse, J., Blomstedt, C.K. et al. The effects of ethyl methanesulfonate treatment on Eucalyptus pollen behaviour in vitro. Trees 21, 379–383 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-007-0137-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00468-007-0137-z