Pollination articles from across Nature Portfolio

The exocyst complex is essential for plant development. Here the authors reveal a link between the exocyst complex and the ER network in regulating the degradation of exocytic compartments, stigma senescence and flower receptivity

Seed hybridization technology improves maize yield in African smallholder farming conditions.

FERONIA prevents polyspermy in Arabidopsis by enabling pectin-stimulated nitric oxide accumulation at the filiform apparatus after the first pollen tube arrives, which disengages LURE1 chemoattraction to prevent late-arriving pollen tubes from entering the ovule.

Plants have developed a variety of molecular ways to express self-incompatibility (SI) that promote outcrossing by preventing self-fertilization. A new study reveals that Citrus uses the S-RNase as the key molecule for expressing SI, giving us further evidence that the S-RNase system is widespread and evolved in an early branch of angiosperms.

The stigma has tightly regulated recognition mechanisms at several levels to prevent unwanted pollen from achieving fertilization. Knowledge about barriers controlling interspecific incompatibility is scarce. New evidence reveals a novel gene involved in regulating interspecies incompatibility in self-compatible Arabidopsis thaliana.

Recognition between proteins encoded by genes duplicated from the self-incompatibility S locus causes intraspecific unilateral incompatibility in Brassica rapa.