Young buds refer to ¯owerbuds 36 h or 12 h before anthesis.
These unopened buds have receptive stigma and undehisced
anthers. At this stage, anthers are yellow and pollen is binucleate
with a fully developed exine.
Different pretreatments were given to these young buds
at 20.5 8C: (a) pre-hydration in a Petri plate lined with moist
®lter paper ()90% RH) for 36 h; (b) agari®ed medium con-
taining 37.5% sucrose in (a) for 36 h; (c) agari®ed medium
containing 37.5% sucroseq15% PEG in (a) for 36 h; (d) pollen
germination media (PGM) in (a) for 12 h; (e) pollen germi-
nation media (PGM) in (a) for 36 h. Pollen was collected
from buds which underwent these treatments and pollen germi-
nation tests were carried out in the media G1±G5 (Table 1).