Parajubaea Sunkha pollen processing for hybrids

[TimHopper]

Just received some Parajubaea Sunkha pollen in the mail today. I have begun the process of drying the flowers to extract and store the pollen.

Going in the oven at 105f for a few hours until the flowers are dry enough to crush with a rolling pin, then sift to collect the pollen which will be stored in the freezer until needsd for pollenation of my Jubutia, and others.

[Alberto]

Tim,that´s a nice inflorescence!

I´m waiting for my bigger sunkha to flower.Maybe in a few years!..............

[PalmGuyWC]

Tim,

Patrick has had no luck in crossing any of the Parajubaeas with Jubaea or Bujubaea, but of course they will cross with Butias, also Syagrus. Maybe you will have more luck with your Jubutaea.

Dick

[TimHopper]

Tim,

Patrick has had no luck in crossing any of the Parajubaeas with Jubaea or Bujubaea, but of course they will cross with Butias, also Syagrus. Maybe you will have more luck with your Jubutaea.

Dick

Dick, I appreciate the information. I plan to use the pollen on Butia, Jubutia, and Syagrus R. I am hoping for luck. Thanks, Tim

[_Rich]

Just received some Parajubaea Sunkha pollen in the mail today. I have begun the process of drying the flowers to extract and store the pollen.

Going in the oven at 105f for a few hours until the flowers are dry enough to crush with a rolling pin, then sift to collect the pollen which will be stored in the freezer until needsd for pollenation of my Jubutia, and others.

Best of luck in your crosses Tim. Pleaser keep us posted on your progress!

Thanks,

Rich

[Gtlevine]

I'm excited about the possibility of Sunkha crosses, definitely my favorite parajubaea.

Gary

[Nigel]

Tim, I am envious of your coup d´etat with the pollen.

I will be following this thread with interest to see how much pollen you separate and how your progress goes.

Your threads are always very informative.

[Mark Heath]

Good luck Tim, I am looking forward to seeing your hybrids that result from your hard work!

[ErikSJI]

Would love to see how much pollen you get out of it. I did the rolling pin method on the Parajubaea cocoides and did not get much out of it. The inflorescence was smaller though.

Can not wait to see what this hybrid may look like.

[TimHopper]

I dried the male flowers (shown in the photo above) for 22 hours in the oven at 105f. The flowers were dry and somewhat crispy, but the rolling pin technique just was not producing any pollen. The pollen was there inside the flowers, but was adhered to the inside. What I eventually tried worked really well. I placed all of the dried male flowers inside a food processor and chopped for about 10 minutes. Most of the flower parts rose to the top, and mostly pollen near the blades. I sifted it all through a flour sifter and ended up with about three tablespoons of pollen. This technique worked much better than anything else that I have tried. I am working now with my largest Bonsal Queen palm to try to cross it with the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen. Soon I will be trying to cross with Butia and Jubutia. I have the pollen stored insine paper and in a cardboard box with desicant strips in the refrigerator. I have never had much luck freezing pollen. I am going to try to get most of this work done over the next 30 days. Fresh pollen sets a lot more seeds than old pollen. Tim

Edited August 10, 2011 by TimHopper

[Nigel]

The flowers were dry and somewhat crispy, but the rolling pin technique just was not producing any pollen. The pollen was there inside the flowers, but was adhered to the inside. What I eventually tried worked really well. I placed all of the dried male flowers inside a food processor and chopped for about 10 minutes.

Tim, I did exactly this with an inflorescence I got from Bolivia 4 years ago. I produced a lot of pollen, but only after using the food processor.

I cant say what happened because after the great lengths to acquire, time spent extracting and spending around US$300 to acquire it , the person i left it with in Brasil to use did absolutely nothing with it.

[ErikSJI]

I dried the male flowers (shown in the photo above) for 22 hours in the oven at 105f. The flowers were dry and somewhat crispy, but the rolling pin technique just was not producing any pollen. The pollen was there inside the flowers, but was adhered to the inside. What I eventually tried worked really well. I placed all of the dried male flowers inside a food processor and chopped for about 10 minutes. Most of the flower parts rose to the top, and mostly pollen near the blades. I sifted it all through a flour sifter and ended up with about three tablespoons of pollen. This technique worked much better than anything else that I have tried. I am working now with my largest Bonsal Queen palm to try to cross it with the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen. Soon I will be trying to cross with Butia and Jubutia. Tim

We used a coffee grinder. Then put it in pollen shaker box. The parajubaea was just to hard to use the rolling pin on they reminded me of dried out kernals of corn.

[Alberto]

The flowers were dry and somewhat crispy, but the rolling pin technique just was not producing any pollen. The pollen was there inside the flowers, but was adhered to the inside. What I eventually tried worked really well. I placed all of the dried male flowers inside a food processor and chopped for about 10 minutes.

Tim, I did exactly this with an inflorescence I got from Bolivia 4 years ago. I produced a lot of pollen, but only after using the food processor.

I cant say what happened because after the great lengths to acquire, time spent extracting and spending around US$300 to acquire it , the person i left it with in Brasil to use did absolutely nothing with it.

:rage:

[tank]

Tim,

Good luck. Always fun to see your process pics.

[TimHopper]

I'm excited about the possibility of Sunkha crosses, definitely my favorite parajubaea.

Gary

Gary, The Sunkha pollen is rare. I very much appreciate the time that you took to carefully package and send these fresh

inflorescences. Hopefully there will be some interesting resulting hybrids. Tim

Edited August 10, 2011 by TimHopper

[TimHopper]

Here are a couple of photos of the Syagrus R. That I plan to use some Parajubaea Sunkha pollen on. I had to cut the inflorescence down to a managable size to work with and to be able to cover it. Makes it a little easier when you are that far up the ladder. The female flowers should be receptive in a couple more days and I will get more photos. Tim

[gyuseppe]

[JD in the OC]

Erik, I use a coffee grinder too, it extracts pollen very well.

Tim, very neat project! You're good with those cocosoids! Keep us updated.

(BTW, I dried and stored my D. lanceolata pollen in the freezer to use it a few days later on my D. leptocheilos. Not sure if it actually worked yet..)

[Alex-v]

Tim very lucky!!, a very interesting and promising hybrid

[freakypalmguy]

Hi Tim,

Those are some interesting combos you're going to try, I hope you have great success with them.

Gary and I harvested one of the earlier spathes that had already opened and released some of it's pollen, but I was still able to get enough pollen for one Butia inflorescence, and have a decent seed set of 50 to 60 fattening up nicely. Some are smaller than others so I imagine I'll get some of the usual "solid wood" seeds.

Matt

[Gtlevine]

Matt, please post up pictures of the seed set.

[freakypalmguy]

Tim,

I hope you don't mind me posting these in your thread, but I think they are relevant since it appears that at least Butia will accept the pollen.

Here's the mother tree in my backyard taken today

[freakypalmguy]

Here's a pic of the seeds that are holding

[freakypalmguy]

The mesh bag is tough to take off and put back on so her's a pic in the end of it.

[freakypalmguy]

one with my hand for scale,

[TimHopper]

Very nice. It is so good to see them set. During the critical time when the flowers start to abort, I always hate to see them fall off. When they stop falling off for a couple of days, you know that you can count on the ones that are left.

[mjff]

You could have just sent it here, no need for an oven, it's been near 105F almost everyday for the last 2 1/2 months.

Good luck! Can't wait to see how they turn out.

[TimHopper]

My Syagrus R. female flowers have started opening so I applied some Parajubaea S. pollen this morning. Only about 25% of the flowers are open right now. It is probably a day early, but I don't want to take any chances on not getting pollen to all of them at the right time. I will dust the pollen on every strand of flowers twice daily (weather permitting) for about 5-6 days. Since I have a limited supply of pollen and want to make the most of it, I am mixing 1 part pollen to 3 parts white all purpose flour for application. I use a large Syringe with 4mm tip for dusting just blowing the mixture on from all angles.

[sergiskan]

hello tim

... as always your post very informative ...

Syagrus r. x P. Shunka ... may be something spectacular ...

good luck!!

best regards

[IdolLurker]

Hello Tim - thanks for sharing all of this information. I am going to try to try some pollination next year and am saving all your helpful tips. That pic you shot looking up the ladder is great - does that palm come with a safety shute?

[TimHopper]

Hello Tim - thanks for sharing all of this information. I am going to try to try some pollination next year and am saving all your helpful tips. That pic you shot looking up the ladder is great - does that palm come with a safety shute?

Ha Ha, Im working about 16 feet off the ground. If I fall I will try to make it look good, and go for the pool.

[iamjv]

Tim, excited to see what kind of seed set you get on your queen.... hope you'll update often.

Matt, a really great looking mother butia and good seed set!!! Excited for you... Look forward to seeing pics of the ripened seeds and then hopefully germination!

Jv

[TimHopper]

Well, I have been applying the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen for several days now. The Syagrus R. female flower petals have started drying and turning brown as you can see in this photo. They are no longer receptive to pollen, so it's time to just wait and watch for a couple of weeks to see if they set and grow. I have another nice syagrus R. that I am planning to work with next. It has very broad and rigid leaflets that are silver-metalic color on the underside of the leaflets. Also the top of the leaflets are kind of blue-green in color.

[gyuseppe]

Tim I wish you good luck!

[JD in the OC]

Tim, you got those cocosoid hybrids on lockdown! Im gonna stick with Dypsis hybrids for now Keep the pics coming! I'm your biggest fan.

[TimHopper]

Thanks guys. I'm excited about the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen. I hope it sets seeds on the queens.

[The Silent Seed]

Here's a newbie question : I'm curious as to why (obviously) the oven doesn't kill / fry the pollen ? I, then, wonder, do the resultant offspring show more diversity using "cooked" pollen versus naturally-dried pollen? (I'm thinking along the lines of possible genetic anomalies caused by the cooking?) Just some thoughts - any input?

[ErikSJI]

Jude in my experience using the oven method the pollen was not as viable as when we hung our pollen and naturally dried it. I have only personally only done the oven method once. However Mark Lynn had done it many times in the past and found his out put 40% better with fresh hung dried pollen and quit using the oven. Mark tells me there are no anomalies in the hybrids just the viability in the pollen itself.

[The Silent Seed]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[TimHopper]

Jude in my experience using the oven method the pollen was not as viable as when we hung our pollen and naturally dried it. I have only personally only done the oven method once. However Mark Lynn had done it many times in the past and found his out put 40% better with fresh hung dried pollen and quit using the oven. Mark tells me there are no anomalies in the hybrids just the viability in the pollen itself.

Erik, I agree that every step required to extract and store pollen probably reduces viability. The Parajubaea flowers presented a unique challenge, and required some special effort for pollen extraction. I applied the pollen twelve times over the course of five days, and just hoping there is enough live pollen to set some seeds. During past crosses using Syagrus pollen I would often just cut a fresh inflourescence on the day that I needed it. I usually wrapped wet paper towels around the cut end and then wrapped them with foil which helped to keep the male flowers opening to produce pollen for several days. When the female flowers on the mother were receptive, just shake the Syagrus inflourescence above to create a huge pollen cloud. Between applications I would just hang it in the garage. Using fresh pollen with no extraction or storage has produced 90% seed set for me on Butia and Jubutia. On the same parents in previous years when I used extracted and stored pollen, I was lucky to get 30%-40% seed set.