biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 1:192-198, 1959 | DOI: 10.1007/BF02928684

Callose formation in pollen tubes and incompatibility

Jaroslav Tupý¹

¹ Department of Plant Physiology, Institute of Biology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Praha

1. Attention is called to the possibility of using resoroin blue for the staining of pollen tubes within the style tissue and the method of staining is described.
2. In pollen tubes, the growth of which is inhibited due to incompatibility, there is at least twice the amount of callose relatively to their length as there is in normally growing compatible tubes. In apple this is primarily due to the greater length of the callose plugs, in tobacco also to their greater density.
3. The regularity of the formation of callose in pollen tubes increases with the rate of their growth.
4. It is suggested that the physiological basis of callose formation consists in the limited capacity of pollen tubes to use the pyran components of metabolized saccharose in the process of respiration.

Received: January 4, 1959; Published: September 1, 1959  Show citation