The studying the morphology properties of pollen grains from specific genotypes and cultivars are important for breeding programmes and germplasm of jujube. The present research aimed to evaluate pollen grains morphological characteristics of ten Iranian jujube by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The pollen grains collected from un-opened-flowers of Al-Ghour’,‘Bardaskan’, ‘Doroh’, ‘Gazik’, ‘Ghom’, ‘Giouk’, ‘Kangan’, ‘Kalkestan’, ‘Magham Sari’ and ‘Noghab’ cultivars at balloon stage. A factorial trial based on completely randomized design with 5 replications was carried out. This study showed that there were significant differences among the cultivars in all measured factors. The polar axis and equatorial diameter of pollen grains values were varied from 15.60 to 19.18 μm and 12.70 μm and 17.11 μm, respectively. Based on the polar axis to equatorial diameter ratio of pollen grains, two distinct pollen shape classes could be recognized among the studied cultivars: oblate spheroidal and subprolate. SEM investigations showed that the sculpturing of exine surface of all cultivars is striate with an irregular pattern. These data demonstrated that cultivar is the main factor determining the pollen grains morphology characteristics in jujubes, which this important information can be useful for assessing taxonomic position within Iranian jujube cultivars.

Keywords