What is meant by emasculation? When …

The process of removal of anthers from the flower is called as emasculation. It is done before dehiscence to prevent contamination of stigma with any undesired pollen and to ensure cross-pollination by desired pollens. Emasculation is useful in artificial hybridization to pollinate stigma with selected emasculated pollens only.  Emasculation is performed by plant breeders in bisexual flowers to obtain the desired variety of a plant by crossing a particular plant with the desired pollen grain. To remove the anthers, the flowers are covered with a bag before they open. This ensures that the flower is pollinated by pollen grains obtained from desirable varieties only. Later, the mature, viable, and stored pollen grains are dusted on the bagged stigma by breeders to allow artificial pollination to take place and obtain the desired plant variety.