Fig. 2: Dynamics of pollen exudation and roly-poly toy-like motion during the early post-pollination in rice.
From: ‘Roly-poly toy’ motion during pollen exudation promotes rapid pollen adhesion in rice
Microscopic observations at each event, pre-pollination (A), pollen capture (B), pollen exudation (C), roly-poly toy-like motion (D) and pollen adhesion (E) photographed during artificial pollination in rice (cv. ‘Koshihikari’). In (F) time-course of changes in Vpollen on the stigma after pollination. C, E are the expanded images taken at a part of stigma shown with the dashed rectangle in (B). sc and pg indicate stigma cells and a pollen grain, respectively. Shortly after pollen capture, exudation occurs from pollen surface (see asterisks in C, D), followed by self-positioning (shown by white arrow) to be tightly fixed at the certain position on stigma by adhesive surface tension effect of the liquid, forming pollen foot (see black arrowheads in E), leading to germination. The contact angle, θ was shown in (E). Data in F is mean ± SE for seven pollen grains from 3 independent plants, and the putative average Vpollen at pollen capture is shown in dashed line in (F). Box-plots for pollen turgor prior to anther dehiscence (G), times from pollen capture to the initiation of pollen exudation or roly-poly toy motion (H), pollen moving distance (I) and rotation angle (J) at self-positioning, and the contact angle calculated at pollen adhesion (K). Bars in A, B, C–E show 200 μm and 40 μm, respectively. Components of boxplots in G–K are: center line, median; box limits, upper and lower quartiles; whiskers, 1.5x interquartile range; error range: highest and lowest values excluding outliers.
