Relationship between pollen load size and seed traits in winter oilseed rape cultivar Compass (CH).

(A) Number of seeds per siliqua and (B) seed weight per siliqua following hand-pollination with pollen load sizes of 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 pollen grains. n = 5 per pollen load treatment. Treatment with >500 pollen grains did not result in any silique and are therefore not included. Data is described by non-linear functions, A) y = 28.99–587.9x-1 (inverse, solid line), P = 0.030 or y = 6.378 + 0.166x – 0.0025x2 (quadratic, dashed line), P = 0.033, and B) y = 95.37 – 1647x -1 (inverse, solid line), P = 0.047. The straight lines refer to mean values in control silique of Compass (CH), where dotted = open pollinated from common garden, dash-dotted = autonomously selfed in greenhouse, and dash-dot-dotted pooled for greenhouse and common garden (as no differences were found between environments for this trait).