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Slow-growing pollen-tube of colchicine-induced 2n pollen responsible for low triploid production rate in Populus

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Abstract

To reveal the mechanism of low triploid production, meiotic observation, induction of 2n pollen by colchicine, hybridization of colchicine-induced 2n pollen and pollen germination were conducted in Populus tomentosa clone 5088. Meiosis of the PMCs was initiated 24 h after it was cultured in the greenhouse. Results showed that the meiosis developed in a consecutive, asynchronous process. Analysis of the occurrence rate of colchicine-induced 2n pollen using the GLM-univariate revealed significant differences among the dominant meiotic stages (F = 45.822, P = 0.000). Significant differences also occurred among various colchicine injection times (F = 10.150, P = 0.004). The most effective stage for colchicine-induced 2n pollen occurred between the zygotene to diakinesis substages. Sixty-eight triploids were confirmed with both flow cytometric analysis and chromosome number-counting among the 3346 offspring. The highest triploid induction rate was 13.2%—significantly lower than the expected triploid production rate of 47.0%—indicating that the colchicine-induced 2n pollen was weak during fertilization. We found positive correlation between the efficiency of triploid production and the frequency of colchicine-induced 2n pollen (r = 0.961, P = 0.001) which suggests that the triploid production rate increased as the occurrence rate of colchicine-induced 2n pollen increased. Analysis using the GLM-univariate indicated that both pollen types (F = 87.50, P < 0.001) and durations of pollen germination (F = 7.61, P = 0.002) did have significant effects on the lengths of pollen-tubes. Haploid pollen-tubes were significantly longer than colchicine-induced 2n pollen-tubes. This suggests that haploid pollen has an advantage during fertilization.

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Acknowledgements

We thank EditorBar (www.editorbar.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript. We also thank Guan Country nursery of Shandong province for collecting the plant material. This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31370659).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Laboratory for Tree Breeding, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Chenguang Zhao, Mengdi Tian, Yanjie Li & Pingdong Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Genetics and Breeding in Forest Trees and Ornamental Plants, Ministry of Education, College of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Beijing Forestry University, No. 35, Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Chenguang Zhao, Mengdi Tian, Yanjie Li & Pingdong Zhang

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  1. Chenguang Zhao
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  2. Mengdi Tian
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  3. Yanjie Li
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  4. Pingdong Zhang
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Contributions

CZ conducted the experiments and wrote the paper. MT help collect plant materials and carried out the experiments. YL conducted the experiments. PZ was responsible for designing experiments, collecting plant materials, analyzing the results and revising the paper. All authors read and approve the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pingdong Zhang.

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Zhao, C., Tian, M., Li, Y. et al. Slow-growing pollen-tube of colchicine-induced 2n pollen responsible for low triploid production rate in Populus . Euphytica 213, 94 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-017-1881-9

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