Pollen morphometrics of four coffee (Coffea sp.) varieties grown in the Philippines

Issue Date

12-2014

Abstract

Coffee (Coffea sp.) is one of the most valuable commercial crops worldwide. Studying pollen grains may be useful in collecting information for plant morphology and genetic. This study utilized traditional and modern geometric morphometrics to examine pollen grains of four commercially-grown coffee varieties in the Philippines, namely, Coffea arabica, C. canephora, C. liberica var. liberica and C. liberica var. Dewevrei. Pollen grain samples were examined at 200x magnification using an Olympus Bx43 light microscope. Digital images and measurement of the pollen grains in both polar and equatorial views were taken for morphometric analyses using CellSens and tpsDig2 software. C. arabica was the most distinct variety in terms of parameters, and had the largest pollen while C. liberica var. liberica had the smallest. C. liberica var. liberica and C. liberica var Dewevrei were the most similar, but can be separated taxonomically beyond the variety level. C. canephora was more similar to C. arabica than to C. liberica in terms of size measurements, while PCS and CVA plots revealed greater overlap of C. canephora with C. liberica. This study is pioneering in the use of landmark-based analysis to determine variations in pollen morphology. This is also among the first studies to use morphometric analysis on the genus coffea.

Source or Periodical Title

Philippine Journal of Crop Science

ISSN

0115-463X

Volume

39

Issue

3

Page

1-7

Document Type

Article

Physical Description

illustrations; graphs; tables

Language

English

Subject

Coffee -- Varieties; Pollen; Morphometrics

En – AGROVOC descriptors

COFFEA ARABICA; COFFEA CANEPHORA; COFFEA LIBERICA; COFFEE; VARIETIES; POLLEN; PLANT ANATOMY; PHILIPPINES

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