Pollination is the act of transferring pollen grains from the male anther (male head) of a flower to the female stigma . In plants, like all living organisms, it aims to create offspring for the next generation. One of the ways plants produce offspring is by making seeds. Seeds contain the genetic information necessary to produce a new plant.
Seeds can only be produced when pollen is transferred between flowers of the same species.
The most important task in pollination is bees. It was first put forward by the German Koelreuter and Sprengel in the 1750-1800s that bees are the pollinators of plants. In 1892, another scientist suggested that Waite bee communities (colonies) could be used to pollinate fruit trees. Later studies were built on these studies and the benefits of having bee colonies near orchards were revealed.
Flowers must rely on vectors to move pollen. These vectors can include wind, water, birds, insects, butterflies, and other animals that visit flowers. Animals or insects that transfer pollen from plant to plant are called " pollinators ".
Pollination is often the undesirable result of an animal's activity on a flower. The pollinator usually eats or collects pollen for its protein and other nutritional properties. When a pollinator visits another flower for the same reason, pollen may fall on the flower's stigma, resulting in successful reproduction of the flower.
The pollinator can successfully fertilize the flower and fruit can grow as a result; or partially fertilize and fruit formation does not occur completely or pollination does not occur and reproduction does not occur.
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Pollination in plants can occur in two ways, self-directed or cross-directed.
Self-pollinating plant species can reproduce even in the absence of pollinators such as insects. Anther opens and pollen falls on the stigma of the same flower. Self-pollination reduces genetic diversity.
Anthers open on one flower and carry pollen to the stigma of another flower by vectors such as insects, wind, or animals. Pollinators may visit several flowers on one plant or several flowers of the same species on several different plants.
Some plants have evolved to have self-incompatibility mechanisms to avoid self-pollination. As a physiological barrier, the flower makes it difficult or impossible to pollinate itself, although it is abundantly pollinated by its own pollen.
Insect and other animal pollinators obtain food in the form of energy-rich nectar and/or protein-rich pollen from the flowers they visit, and in turn the flowers receive the service of pollinators that carry pollen from one flower to the next.
While food is often sufficient attraction for pollinators, flowering plants also attract pollinators by using a combination of leaf shapes, scents, and colors. "Pollination syndromes" have been defined to describe the attractiveness of certain types, shapes, colors, and scents of flowers to a range of pollinators.