Single-cell Type Proteomics for Studying Stress-induced Pollen Infertility

Crop production has been experiencing a significant loss to abnormal air and soil conditions, which caused by global warming and climate changes. Tomato is a major crop worldwide and pollen development is the most sensitive to environmental stress among the biological processes affecting plant productivity. Thus tomato pollen development is a good model to monitor the more sensitive process and will assume a decisive role in causing yield reduction as weather gets increasingly hotter. In this study, it will determine precisely the timing and the effects of heat stress on the final fate of pollens which is the essential step for exploring the underlying mechanisms. Tomato ‘Money Maker’ will be grown in a glasshouse at day/night temperature of 26/22℃ with natural illumination. Flowers will be tagged on the first sight of emergence. The process will continue daily for 15-20 days until we get at least 50 each of microsporocytes, meiosis, dyads, tetrads and free microspore. Then the plants will be transferred to three temperature regime chamber: day/night temperatures of 32/26℃, 38/26℃ for high condition and 26/22℃ as control. Anthers will be collected and examined under a microscope for the presence or absence of pollens; treated pollens will be under in vitro viability test and the results will determine the heat treatments for inducing non-viable pollens or non-germinable pollens; in addition, treated pollens will be tested for pollinating tomato flowers to determine if heat treatment induce in vivo nonfunctional pollens.