XVI International Botanical Congess

The dry stigma surface of Brassica readily accepts cross-, but rejects self-pollen. Pollination involves a series of interactions between families of polymorphic proteins contained in the pollen coating and at the stigma surface, members of one such pollen protein family have been demonstrated to bind specifically to stigmatic proteins encoded by the S(self-incompatibility)locus. The pollen/stigma interaction is emerging as a complex sequence of events which leads (in crosses) to the establishment of compatibility. The means by which this molecular dialogue has evolved, especially that component which rejects pollen, remains far from clear.