Cryopreservation of Coconut and Arecanut Pollen

Abstract

Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) and arecanut (Areca catechu L.) are important commercial crops sustaining the life of millions of small and marginal farmers. The coconut palm (Arecaceae family), cultivated across the tropical regions of the world, is monotypic and the genetic diversity is distributed amongst various ecotypes and landraces. Areca catechu is one of the commercially important palms, also belonging to the family Arecaceae and it is the only cultivated species in the genus Areca. There exists a vast potential for implementation of in vitro technologies for conservation of coconut and arecanut genetic resources in addition to various exsitu and insitu approaches. Through pollen cryopreservation, pollen grains from desirable palms can be stored over a long period of time in addition to storage of multiple genotypes in small space for their future utility in case of threat from biotic and abiotic factors. The protocol for coconut cryopreservation, developed at Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (ICAR-CPCRI), involves desiccation of male flowers at 40°C for 24 h followed by pollen extraction. The protocol is simple and highly effective for the implementation of pollen cryobank to complement the field germplasm collections as well as for its utilization in hybridization programs. Besides this, a protocol has also been developed for pollen collection and its desiccation, in vitro germination, pollen cryopreservation, and its viability and fertility assessment in arecanut. Using this procedure, pollen extraction could be done from fully opened male flowers following desiccation at room temperature.