Three weeks after retrieving my breeding mothers from cold storage, I made my first crosses for this year.
One thing I need input with is how to handle frozen pollen.
Should I return the pollen to the freezer after making my crosses?
Should I keep the pollen in the fridge?
Chuckp
Chuck,
I believe you should return the pollen to the freezer to arrest any aging and subsequent loss of fertility. If you will use it up in a few days it is probably adequate to keep it in the fridge portion.
When I take the frozen pollen out of the freezer, I put into a insulated picnic container which is contains water absorbent crystals to minimize the cold pollen absorbing water when the cover is removed (condensation). After using the pollen, the unused pollen goes back into the picnic container. After about 5 days of this use the pollen goes into my container of “mixed” pollen to be used with low priority mothers or “targets of opportunity” which I did not expect to be ready and for which I did not have a planned pollen ready. The other thing I do with “targets of opportunity” is to look for a recently opened flower and just put that flower on top of the “target of opportunity” My use of 2 inch by 2 inch zip lock bags over the pollinated flower hold the 2 flowers together.
This would make an interesting newsletter article, compiling different members’ approaches with frozen pollen.
Cathy
Central NJ, zone 7a