Pollen shipping, storing, extracting.

[ErikSJI]

After pollinating with Mark Lynn and following his lead he made me go through several methods of pollinating as well as extracting pollen, shipping pollen and storing it. We both tried every medium out there that we know of.

Obviously every palm is different in extracting the pollen. Such as the Syagrus the pollen just seems to fall right off of it just as the Butia's seem to be ready to accept it. Which is why it is the easiest hybrid to do. However the Parajubaea and Jubaea seemed quite difficult to extract the pollen. Even using the baking in the oven method and rolling pin did not do the trick to extract enough pollen for the job. Others had expressed using a food processor.

Mark Lynn decided to use coffee grinders as he was dealing with a lot of different pollens at the same time and he did not want any cross contamination in the pollens that he was using so he has quite a few there and they are easier to clean then food processor's. He has one for each separate pollen.

As He did this he had me doing it the old school way using screens and a rolling pin and a oven. It took me a good couple hours to get a minimal amount of pollen after screening it. Thankfully he made me stop to show me it only took him 20 minutes to process his pollen with the coffee grinder and then placing it in a pollen shaker box.

Pollen shipping. We have the best results with having the pollen donor chop the inflorescence down put it in a pillow case and a box ship it overnight. Unfortunately you can not do that overseas to a lot of countries as it is live plant material. So you have to result back to sifting it vacuum sealing it and storing it. Which we do with an everyday counter top vacuum sealer and put it in the freezer.

Viability. Mark had been storing the pollen that I had shipped in by the vacuum seal method as well as receiving other pollen fresh after it had been screened locally as well as receiving the whole inflorescence fresh.

The results were after pollinating with the pollen stored had a very poor output.

Pollen screened and sent locally did average.

Pollen sent with its whole inflorescence did very well.

[Gtlevine]

Tim had good success with the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen I sent him, see above post. For shipping u cut off the flower stalks and put them in a paper bag with a salt block to keep the flowers dry, then I put the bag in a box and sent second day air. Tim said the pollen was in good shape.

[ErikSJI]

Tim had good success with the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen I sent him, see above post. For shipping u cut off the flower stalks and put them in a paper bag with a salt block to keep the flowers dry, then I put the bag in a box and sent second day air. Tim said the pollen was in good shape.

That is good to hear. Shipping flowers with in the states is a lot easier. Paper bags are great as well as pillow cases. Anything else and I would assume you have to worry about rising humidity factors and heat. Never used a salt block but Mark Lynn tells me he has used a product called Damprid which is used to absorb the moisture.

[Gtlevine]

Actually, I just remembered that I did take a de-moisture block from a powdered supplement bottle I had and put it in the bag of pollen. I think the moisture is the biggest issue in shipping pollen.

[ErikSJI]

Tim had good success with the Parajubaea Sunkha pollen I sent him, see above post. For shipping u cut off the flower stalks and put them in a paper bag with a salt block to keep the flowers dry, then I put the bag in a box and sent second day air. Tim said the pollen was in good shape.

That is good to hear. Shipping flowers with in the states is a lot easier. Paper bags are great as well as pillow cases. Anything else and I would assume you have to worry about rising humidity factors and heat. Never used a salt block but Mark Lynn tells me he has used a product called Damprid which is used to absorb the moisture.

Also I noticed a lot of people pollinating Syagrus have to climb that big ladder as well as with coconuts. Or even retrieving pollen or seeds from 4 meter trees in the wild. It gets dangerous climbing. So while searching around I found these guys out of Maui that are spikless tree trimmers and saw this video on youtube.

This item that they are using is a Lonewolfe tree stand used for hunters. I bought one and it works great and gets you right up into the tree. Jubaea however is to large for this. However I still have not figured out the proper ways to repel down or I am just to scared and I just shimmy it back down.

[ErikSJI]

Actually, I just remembered that I did take a de-moisture block from a powdered supplement bottle I had and put it in the bag of pollen. I think the moisture is the biggest issue in shipping pollen.

I believe damprid is the same product used in those little packets in the white bags that you find when you get a package from all sorts of products. Which is why he started using it.

[Alicehunter2000]

The results were after pollinating with the pollen stored had a very poor output.

Pollen screened and sent locally did average.

Pollen sent with its whole inflorescence did very well.