Investigating the effect of chemicals on pollen images produced by SEM

The study of pollen using scanning electron microscope (SEM) often involves the use of chemical substances e.g. different percentages of ethanol, acid acetic, acid aceticethanol and formalin- acid acetic- ethanol in the preparation stage. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of some mentioned chemicals on the quality of SEM images of pollen grains. The results showed that the use of one treatment does not determine all the characteristics of pollen grain morphology, for example, ethanol caused the formation of shading and an exponential halo around pollen grains of Heliotropium europaeum and Physalis divaricata respectively. On the other hand, all treatments cannot show all the characteristics of pollen grain morphology of one taxon, for instance, the effect of 3 treatments acetic acid-alcohol,formalin-acetic acid-alcohol and ethanol on P. divaricata showed different views on pollen grain morphology. The results show that due to the nature of exine, utilizing proper chemicals in the preparation stage is very essential.

Keywords:

Chemicals , Pollen morphology , Pollen preparation , SEM