II part - pollen status determination - I'm sorry but I need more help... (May/08/2006 )

Hi everybody!

Despite Beena's kind help, I have another problem to find a protocol for pollen maturity status determination.

The matter is that the method I posted in the past thread uses "acetocarmine" dye, which is called in the same way in Italy. I searched big companies catalogues, but Schneider's acetocarmine solution is (mysteriously ) not sold here and information about product are not avilable for italian consumers.
In the Italian catalogue, I found only products called "carmine" and "carminic acid": both of them are defined as Natural Red #4, but there aren't precise information about what they do and they seem to be quite different from each other.
I need something (anything) that will make me able to discriminate uninucleate from binucleate pollen microspores.
Please, tell me if you know wich are the differences between "acetocarmine", "carmine" and "carminic acid" or if you know another dye that I can use to stain pollen nuclei.
Thank you very much for your patience...

Dear Ila,
You can prepare aceto carmine in your lab.Just you have to prepare 45% acetic acid.Take 100 ml of 45% acetic acid.Add 2 gms of carmine to it and boil.than cool it and filter. your 2% acetocarmine is ready now
Beena
We did like tat only .I dont know if readymade aceto carmine is available or not.

Thank you twice, Beena!