The release of genetically modified grasses. Part 2: the influence of wind direction on pollen dispersal

Abstract

 In part 1 an experiment was described for determining the extent of pollen dispersal from a Lolium source. The results were used to test Bateman’s pollen dispersal equations, which were found to be not particularly useful for describing variation in pollen deposition with distance. An improvement is suggested here which takes the influence of wind direction into account. For 11 of the 12 datasets the new equations fit significantly better than the original ones. Mean wind directions were used to produce 15 data subsets for testing Bateman’s equations for dispersal downwind of a pollen source. These equations fitted only 4 of the data subsets, all of which were collected from traps facing towards the pollen source. The usefulness of the model equations in estimating the importance of turbulence is brought into question. It is shown that models incorporating only distance and wind direction do not accurately describe pollen deposition. The amount of pollen deposited does not always decrease smoothly with increasing distance from the source. The variation in the amount of pollen deposited is probably influenced by several factors, including wind speed and turbulence.