Pollen germination contributes to providing guidance for cross pollination of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.)

The majority of sweet cherry cultivars are gametophytically self-incompatible and require pollinating trees in production.
It is important to overcome the self-incompatibility of sweet cherry and to improve pollination efficiency.
We selected 13 cherry cultivars, including ‘Mashad Black’, ‘Summit’, ‘Kordia’, ‘Santina’, ‘Regina’, ‘Rainier’, ‘Brooks’, ‘Valerij Cskalov’, ‘Minnie Royal’, ‘Xiangquan 1’, ‘Benton’, ‘Katalin’, and ‘Black Gold’, and explored their pollen germination patterns through pollen germination test.
We also conducted cross-pollination experiments to correlate cross-seeding rates between parents of different S-genotypes with pollen germination.
The results suggest that there may be a positive relationship between pollen germination of female parents and its fruit setting rates in cross-pollination. ‘Rainier’ and ‘Minnie Royal’ have relatively high pollen germination rates and also have high fruit setting rates during cross-pollination, making them good pollinating parents. ‘Rainier’ is a good cross-pollinated female parent with a maximum relative fruit setting rate of  54.7% with ‘Brooks’, and 45.7% with ‘Minnie Royal’. While ‘Minnie Royal’ is used as the female parent, it crosses with three cherry cultivars, and the relative fruit setting rate is not less than 14%. Conversely, cultivars with relatively low pollen germination rates, such as ‘Mashad Black’, ‘Santina’, and ‘Kordia’, all showed poor fruit setting rates.
This study provides important reference and guidance for the selection of pollinating trees in production and cross-breeding of sweet cherry.

IX International Cherry Symposium

Y.L. Li, X.W. Duan, J. Wang, G.H. Yan, X.M. Zhang, C.B. Wu, Y. Zhou, X. Zhang, K.C. Zhang

sweet cherry, pollen germination, cross pollination, fruit setting rate, self-incompatibility

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1408.62