Airborne
pollen is unique to
each
ecosystem. Various factors that influence this are the flora available,
wind
direction, wind speed, temperature, humidity and rainfall. Mapping of
the
airborne pollen against a calendar month gives the pollen calendar.
Apart from
giving an idea of the flora available in the vicinity the pollen
calendar
clearly provides the flowering period of the various taxa in the
vicinity.
Generating data of airborne pollen at various strata would give an idea
on the
pollen pollutant in the specific layer. As many of the pollen are
allergens to
public or to individual, practicing physicians would find pollen
calendar a
handy tool to arrive on the cause many of the allergic symptoms in
their
locality.
As
a basic study in
the Botany Department at Madras Christian College, Chennai, study of
the
airborne pollen was conducted in the year 1991 and a pollen calendar
generated.
This was the first pollen calendar made for
SPORE
TRAP
Vertical
cylinder spore trap is
used for this study
It
consists of a 1.5cm dia. glass
cylinder about 15cm in length held firmly by a steel angle
A
35cm dia. circular aluminum
shield was used to protect the spore trap from sunlight and
precipitation
1.5
x
1.3cm transparent
cellophane tape was wound around the glass cylinder after dipping the
tape in
molten Vaseline and exposed to the atmosphere for 24 hours
Care
is taken to set the trap
without any contamination during mounting and dismounting.
The
sampler was installed 2m and 10m
above ground level (as required)
PREPARATION
OF GLYCERINE JELLY
Glycerine
jelly with Basic
Fuchsin is used to prepare the slide
To
prevent bacterial or fungal
growth antibiotics are added to the jelly
PREPARATION
OF REFERENCE SLIDE
Pollen
from mature anthers of
fresh flower buds were crushed in a centrifuge tube with alcohol and
the
supernatant transferred to another centrifuge tube with 2 drops of
Fuchsin and
centrifuged.
The
pellet (pollen) was mounted
on a clean microscopic slide having a tiny piece of glycerine jelly and
cover
slip placed over it and sealed with molten paraffin wax
The
slides were labeled and used
as reference pollen slide for identification of pollens.
PREPARATION
OF SAMPLE SLIDE
The
24 hour exposed cello tape
from the Spore Trap is mounted on a clean microscopic slide, after
placing a
drop of molten glycerine jelly. A drop of molten glycerine jelly is
placed on
top of the tape and the cover slip is placed without any air spaces...
PHOTOGRAPH
Photographs
of pollen were
taken under 50x and
200x magnifications using 5x ocular.
