The use of vibratome sections of cereal spikelets to study anther development and meiosis

We have developed a method using vibratome sectioning coupled with confocal microscopy to analyse pre-meiotic and meiotic events in developing wheat anthers. This report describes the application of fluorescence in sire hybridization to three-dimensionally preserved tissue sections from intact florets. We show that excellent imaging of all the stages of meiosis up to telophase I can be achieved, and show centromere positions and pre-meiotic homologous pairing both in meiocytes and tapetum cells. These clear results using intact tissue sections are contrasted with conventional spreading methods for analysis of meiosis in plants, which we show can produce artefactual or uninterpretable results.