Question

Pollen culture is used to produce
a. Hybrids
b. Haploid plant
c. Disease resistant plant
d. None of the above

Answer 1

The production of large numbers of haploid plants from pollen grains in an aseptic culture of isolated pollen grains or anthers has now been confirmed in many angiosperms. It is a technique which holds much promise for creating desired variability for basic and applied genetics and for producing pure lines for crop improvement.

Complete answer: Pollen culture is a technique of production of haploid plants by the culture of pollen grains isolated from an anther of a plant under the aseptic condition on artificial media of known composition. This popular technique was first discovered by Guha and Maheshwari (1964).
During the process, pollens are obtained by squeezing the anthers after surface sterilization. The obtained pollens are cultured on nutrient media. The pollens develop into a callus which is treated with auxin it promotes rooting and when it is treated with cytokinin it stimulates cell maturation, differentiation and finally, promotes the development of stem.

The pollen culture offers the following additional advantages:
(i) Pollen is ideal for uptake, transformation and mutagenic studies as pollens can be uniformly exposed to chemicals and physical mutagens.
(ii) Pollen may be directly transformed into an embryoid. So it is very suitable for understanding biochemistry and physiology of androgenesis.
(iii) Higher yields of haploid plants per anther could be expected in pollen culture.
Among the given options:
A hybrid plant results from cross-pollinating two different plant varieties and then growing the seeds obtained from the cross. The plants which grow from those seeds are considered hybrids.
Various hybridization and genetic engineering techniques are used to get disease resistant plants. Methods used in breeding plants for disease resistance are usually similar to those used in breeding for other traits (characters) except that two organisms are involved—the host plant and the pathogen.

So, the correct answer is B.

Note: Pollen or microspore culture is an in vitro technique by which the pollen grains, preferably at the uni-nucleated stage, are squeezed out aseptically from the intact anther and then cultured on nutrient medium. Here the microspores, without producing male gametes, develop into haploid embryoids or callus tissues that give rise to haploid plantlets by embryogenesis or organogenesis.