IDENTIFIKASI FENOMENA SELF-INCOMPATIBILITY PADA Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L.

Hybridization is one way to produce Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. which have various shape and colour of flowers. However, this is hampered by the possibility of self-incompatibility in Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. To identify self-incompatibility in Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. the simplest methods are used by observing the morphology and anatomy of fruit development, followed by a descriptive analysis of the data that has been obtained. The analysis results on crossing artificial pollination to 103 flowers of single pink Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. show that the fruits survive until day 7 after pollination. Furthermore, the data show that there is no fruit, seed, and embryo development. Indeed the fruit turns yellow and finally shed. But the self artificial pollination shows that 35 seeds develop from 96 pollinations. The longer seed, which 13 days after pollination, grew up. The globular embryo could find on 3 DAP (day after pollination) fruit set, and the 9 DAP fruit set shows the development of heart shape. The result suggests that the phenomenon of self-incompatibility on Hibiscus rosa sinensis L. predicts as postzygotic self-incompatibility.

Why Variation in Flower Color May Help Reproductive Success in the Endangered Australian Orchid Caladenia fulva

Caladenia fulva G.W. Carr (Tawny Spider-orchid) is a terrestrial Australian endangered orchid confined to contiguous reserves in open woodland in Victoria, Australia. Natural recruitment is poor and no confirmed pollinator has been observed in the last 30 years. Polymorphic variation in flower color complicates plans for artificial pollination, seed collection and ex situ propagation for augmentation or re-introduction. DNA sequencing showed that there was no distinction among color variants in the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and the chloroplast trnT-trnF and matK regions. Also, authentic specimens of both C. fulva and Caladenia reticulata from the reserves clustered along with these variants, suggesting free interbreeding. Artificial cross-pollination in situ and assessment of seed viability further suggested that no fertility barriers existed among color variants. Natural fruit set was 15% of the population and was proportional to numbers of the different flower colors but varied with orchid patch within the population. Color modeling on spectral data suggested that a hymenopteran pollinator could discriminate visually among color variants. The similarity in fruiting success, however, suggests that flower color polymorphism may avoid pollinator habituation to specific non-rewarding flower colors. The retention of large brightly colored flowers suggests that C. fulva has maintained attractiveness to foraging insects rather than evolving to match a scarce unreliable hymenopteran sexual pollinator. These results suggest that C. fulva should be recognized as encompassing plants with these multiple flower colors, and artificial pollination should use all variants to conserve the biodiversity of the extant population.

Replacing cheap nature? Sustainability, capitalist future-making and political ecologies of robotic pollination

This article undertakes a critical examination of emergent technologies involving the use of robots to carry out crop pollination in the context of declining populations of bees and other insect pollinators. It grasps robotic pollination research and development as a future-making practice, which imagines and partially materialises one possible future by inscribing a specific ontology in the present which is geared to enact that future. Unpacking this, the article traces how artificial pollination reframes pollination ecology around a productivist ontology and inscribes a web of meanings around nature, technology and economy which point to a future where insect pollinators are largely absent or extinct. It argues that this effectively backgrounds alternative futures in which structural transformations of agriculture and the world food system are able to mitigate and avert pollinator decline and biodiversity loss, and also reveals the deep rationale of artificial pollination. While invoking notions of sustainability and food security, robotic pollination defines these in highly anthropocentric, economistic and self-referential terms, as a matter of enabling the reproduction of agro-industrial capital accumulation. Drawing upon the political ecology of Jason W Moore, the article situates robotic pollination as a future-making project in relation to capitalist strategies of accumulation through the appropriation of ‘Cheap Nature’, to show how the automation of pollination would enact a shift in the composition of agro-industrial capital, with systemic consequences inimical to both ecological sustainability and sustained accumulation. In this respect, robotic pollination is a case study in the propensity of capital to invest in the making of sustainable futures only insofar as sustainability equates to the reproduction of capital within the web of life.