For this, female stage ‘Hass’ flowers were collected at anthesis
and maintained in wet florist foam in the laboratory. Hand
pollinations were performed by direct contact of the stigma with
the anthers of male-stage ‘Fuerte’ flowers collected when all the
anthers had dehisced. Five different density treatments were established
based on the number of anthers used to perform hand
pollinations (1, 3, 6, 9, 18) and between 17 and 33 flowers were
pollinated for each treatment. Flowers were fixed 24 h later in
FAA (70% ethanol: glacial acetic acid: formalin [18:1:1; v/v/v])
(Johansen, 1940) and prepared for microscope observations. Pollen
adhesion, pollen germination and pollen tube growth were evaluated.