Looking for recommendations on hybridizing agave

[hydrophobic]

I have four agave shooting up stalks right now:
Agave Parrasana
Agave Vilmoriniana 'Stained Glass'
Agave 'Blue Glow'
Agave 'Sharkskin Shoes'

I would love to hybridize these if possible as I'm sure any of them crossed would look gorgeous, but I have absolutely no personal experience in doing this and I'm struggling to find information regarding it online. After many years of lurking I finally made an account here just to ask about this, so if anyone has any suggestions on how I should go about attempting to cross these, please let me know. Thank you for your time.

[Spination]

Congrats on your opportunity to do some pollination.

It's pretty easy. Here's an image of a Manfreda 'Silver Leopard' that flowered for me last year. Idea is the same and flowers are similar enough. Pollen goes from anther (A), to stigma (S) as marked in image. I usually use a paintbrush, but with the manfreda cross I made, I also removed anthers by hand and rubbed them on the stigma.

2018 05 20 Manfeda Silver Leopard b marked.jpg (108.19 KiB) Viewed 1704 times

[Gee.S]

Agave vilmoriniana is a bulbil producer, so leave that out of any hybridization schemes.

[hydrophobic]

I'm worried about self pollination as well as these stalks potentially pushing out flowers at different times (heck the Parrasana has been pushing its stem for over a year now), is there anything I should do to combat this? Can I freeze pollen? Can I pollinate the stigmas early? Or pull off the anthers so I can get acquire the pollen without self pollinating? Thank you so much for your response!!

[hydrophobic]

Agave vilmoriniana is a bulbil producer, so leave that out of any hybridization schemes.

ah I actually forgot about that, the stained glass bulbils actually revert back to the non-variegated form, thank you for the reminder!

[Gee.S]

IMHO, you're wading in too deep. I would just cross to the best of my ability and see what turns up.

[agavedave]

If you air dry the pollen it should keep in the fridge for a week. If dried to 30% RH, 2 years in the freezer is possible.

To avoid 'selfing' I remove anthers at the first sign of them opening to avoid spillage onto the stigmas below. Sometimes, I take about a 2 inch length of a drinking straw with a cotton wool plug at one end and cover the stigmas.

Most of the ones that I have hand pollenated, the stigmas were quite sticky when receptive and that occured 18-24 hours after the anthers opened. In this situation a paint brush can get a bit gummed up so I just put some pollen on my finger and wipe it on.

If you have trouble reaching the flowers , a long cane with some cotton wool wrapped around the end sometimes works.

Best regards
Dave

[hydrophobic]

Dave thank you very very much for your advice, if I succeed and get any interesting crosses you will be certainly receiving some goodies from me.