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Highlights

Visualizing the dispersal trajectory of rice pollen.

Abstract. Understanding pollen dispersal behavior during hybrid rice seed production is a necessary step for further clarifying the pollination mechanism of hybrid rice and advancing the mechanization of pollination. This work aims to simulate the pollen dispersal process after detachment from the rice panicle using a coupled CFD-DPM method. Aerodynamic properties of hybrid rice pollen were determined using settling experiments. The pollen dispersal geometry domain was constructed by combining the planting agronomy of hybrid rice seed production with the pneumatic pollination process. The standard k-ε model was used to simulate the horizontal jet flow. The discrete phase model (DPM) was used to realize the interaction between airflow and pollen. Mesh independence verification and experimental validation were performed for pollen-air two-phase simulations. The simulation visualized rice pollen dispersal trajectories and further predicted and analyzed the decay of pollen dispersal velocity, sedimentation distribution, deposition rate, and escape rate. The experimental validation results showed that the simulation could effectively predict the pollen dispersal process.