Testing kiwifruit pollen

On my very first day I learned how to test kiwifruit pollen with Alexander Stain. This is a very toxic stain that scientist use to work with the pollen of plants. I had to wear gloves and a lab coat to do this. After the drops of stain and pollen dried, we put the glass slides under the microscope and counted the pollen on each slide. 

Then we recorded the data (all the pollen bits we counted) on a spreadsheet. Scientists do a lot of recording and data entry on computers. And then they have to look at what the data tells them and make decisions from that. 

I work with very friendly and helpful people here in Te Puke at the NZ Plant and Food Research Centre. They do so much research on kiwifruit so that orchardists can get better and more kiwifruit and so that people can have jobs like: pruning the kiwifruit, picking the fruit and packing the fruit to be sent everywhere so that every one can have a taste of our lovely kiwifruit.