METHOD FOR DRYING MAIZE POLLEN

Pollen managements consisted of suitable harvest timing, pollen drying to a certain misture content, pollen viability testing, and pollen storage. Maize pollen was sensitive to desiccation. This experiment was aimed to determine preservation technique in reducing pollen water content while maintaining its viability. Maize variety which used in this research was BIMA 3 as male line hybrid maize. Pollen viability testing used potassium iodide (KI) 1%. This experiment used randomized block design with 3 factors and 2 replicates, i.e. boron (H3BO3) fertilizers (0 and 3 kg ha-1 ), drying techniques (MgCl2, silica gel, zeolite, preservation in air-cond room (18±1 °C; RH43%), and drying periods (0, 2, 4, 6, 8 hours). The observation response of this experiment were viability and pollen weight changing. The result showed that there is no interaction between three factors to observation response, while drying technique and drying period combinations showed interactions to observation response. Pollen maize drying used silica gel for 4 hours was able to decline much pollen weight and maintain pollen viability better than other techniques.