Pollen tubes were able to grow through the styles and success-fully reached the ovules in both inter-specific crosses indicating that there was no pre-fertilization barrier. Failure of the pollen tube to reach the ovary is due to the arrest of pollen germination or inhibition of pollen tube growth through styles. Such arrested pollen tubes often show abnormalities in the form of thicker tubes,excessive deposition of callose, swollen tips and branching of tubes(Lewis and Crowe, 1958; Rego et al., 2000). From our observation,there was no anti-callose found on top of stigma surface from the esterase reaction, and resulted in high stigma receptivity. Zijlstraet al. (1991) found that the barrier of inter-specific cross betweenC. chinense and C. annuum and between C. baccatum and C. annuum occurred at the level of pollen tube growth into the egg cell. The same authors also found that the barrier of the crosses between C.chinense and C. pubescens and C. baccatum and C. pubescens was due to the arrest of pollen tube growth in the style. Our study demonstrated clearly that there was a very high pollen–pistil compatibility between ‘cv. C’ and ‘cv. B’ in both the direct (C/B) and reciprocal crosses (B/C) and the pollen tubes could enter the ovary and reach the ovules within 24 h after pollination.