Let's first discuss the pearl cultivation process:
1. A pearl technician cuts a strip of the mantle tissue from the donor mussel, then cuts it into small pieces.
2. Opens the recipient mussel.
3. They put the nucleus of the recipient mussel with the tissue.
The pearl nucleus was made by shell, which can be round, coin, or star-shaped,
it determines the shape of the pearl rather than its color. The key to deciding the pearl's color is the mantle tissue. The mantle tissue is a small fragment of the donor mussel's mantle. The mantle is a thin membrane inside the mussel's shell that secretes nacre.
After a small piece is inserted into the recipient mussel, a pearl sac forms on the surface of the pearl nucleus, continuously secreting nacre to form a pearl layer by layer. Interestingly, these nacre-secreting cells retain the original genetic characteristics of the donor mussel. The color of the pearl sac is the same as the color of the donor mussel. Therefore, the final color of the pearl is mainly determined by the mantle cells of the donor mussel rather than by the recipient mussel.
For example, suppose a purple, white, or golden mussel is selected as the donor mussel, the pearl that eventually grows will often be the corresponding purple, white, or golden color, even if the recipient mussel itself is white. Therefore, you will see pearls of various colors growing from the same mussel.
Chinese pearl farmers improve the color and quality of freshwater pearls with more beautiful colors, overtones, and luster through generations of selection of the mother pearl.
Of course, the color of a pearl is also related to the farming environment and water quality. More and more colors with freshwater pearls could be in the future.
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