Methods for testing the fertility of tomato pollen formed at low temperature

A reliable indication of pollen fertility is the number of seeds per fruit produced following artificial pollination, but this method is laborious, and very slow because sampling needs ripe fruits. To seek faster techniques to test the fertility of tomato pollen produced at low temperatures, we cultivated a large collection of tomato cultivars and lines of related wild species under cold conditions with minimum nocturnal temperatures below 10°C. We compared numbers of seeds per fruit with: number of pollen tubes at the base of the style, index of natural fruit-set, percentage of pollen grains stained with acetocarmine, percentage of pollen grains giving fluorochromatic reaction with fluoresceine diacetate, and percentage of pollen grains which germinated in vitro. All these variates correlated positively and significantly between themselves. The number of pollen tubes at the base of the style most closely correlated with number of seeds. This technique is equally laborious, but is good for precise testing of small numbers of genotypes and results are quickly available. Both acetocarmine staining and fluorochromatic reaction were simple, fast techniques with potential for screening large collections to detect genotypes with highly fertile pollen at low temperature; acetocarmine was the best, but neither test would identify genotypes with low-fertile pollens. Index of natural fruit-set and germination in vitro did not effectively determine the fertility of pollen produced at low temperature.