Pollen viability, stigma receptivity and seed set in Viola tricolor

Pollen viabilities and stigma receptivities of 19 accessions in Viola tricolor were assayed by in vitro pollen germination and benzidine-H2O2 method in this paper respectively. The seed set through hand-pollinate selfing was also investigated. The results showed that the pollen germination percent of V. tricolor reach peak at 8 h after in vitro germination and at that time pollen viabilities among 19 accessions were significantly different. The pollen viability of ‘08-NL-H5’ is the highest with 65.14% germination and that of ‘EP-1’ is lowest with 19.32% germination. The stigma receptivity of V. tricolor was up to best on flower opening day and declined to nearly zero on fifth day after flowering. The variation of stigma receptivities among 19 accessions are great, in which the stigma receptivity of ‘Yellow-1’ is strongest and that of ‘Yellow-2’ is weakest. The variation of seed sets among 19 accessions are also divesity by manual selfing pollination. The correlation between the pollen viability and the stigma receptivity is significantly high, but the correlation between seed set and pollen viability, and seed set and stigma receptivity in V. tricolor are low, which implies that the compatibility between pollen and stigma of V. tricolor maybe lies in important role during pollination and fertilization.