In my attempts to pollinate Albuca spiralis with no success, I finally found information about pollinating the A. spiralis which called for microwaving pollen and mixing it with fresh pollen. I tried that with the A. spiralis and it worked!!! I got a seed pod!
Further research of microwaving pollen yielded sparse results but what I did find was interesting ... especially a bit that said microwaving pollen may overcome self sterility bye changing the polysaccharides some how!
Here is a link to pretty much all the information I found - under "microwaving pollen"
http://www.pacificbulbsociety....
Nhu Nguyen's post has the best information (below) - but read all of the entries if you're interested.
microwaving pollen
Nhu Nguyen (Mon, 15 Feb 2016 10:11:33 PST)
Hi Uli,
Yes, you are right. With more accurate description, it would be most useful
to different people. I have an old model that is 400 Watts. Power at 400
watts and 15-20 seconds is what I typically use. If you have more powerful
models, you can scale it down. According to what I can find on the
internet, the scaling is linear.
For example, if you have a 1000 Watt machine, my output would be 40% as
powerful as yours. You should reduce the power on your machine to the 40%
power setting. Alternatively, you can reduce cooking time to 6-8 seconds at
100% power.
David mentioned that perhaps drying is a cause. I don't think that is the
case since air drying of pollen doesn't help to bypass
self-incompatibility. You'd need some really fancy machines or some
chemical reactions to see if the polysaccharides have changed - we need a
chemist. Jim Shields, where are you?
I searched around a little bit and it appears that microwaves are often
used to solubilize polysaccharides or cause change in structure of highly
branched polysaccharide molecules. So it appears that my hypothesis of
microwaves changing the polysaccharides that causes self-incompatibility
may hold some water.
Nhu
On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 1:58 AM, Johannes Ulrich Urban <
[email protected]> wrote:
What is half strength in a microwave? Can you give the setting in Watt?
With an indication in Watt the energy applied would be clear, then the
length of exposure to that energy can be dealt with separately. I would
guess that both the level of energy exposure and its length do matter.
