What is Reproduction?
Production of new individuals from parents is known as reproduction.(Or in other words) Reproductin is the biological process by which new individual organisms "offspring" are produced from their "parents". Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction. There are two forms of reproduction: asexual and sexual.
In this topic, we will mainly deal with asexual reproduction. There are various methods of asexual reproduction in plants which are given below -
Method of Asexual Reproduction-----
1 Vegetative propagatin-
It is a type of asexual reproduction in which new plants are produced from the vegetative parts of the parent plant. Parts like root, stem and leaves are called vegetative part of a plant.
2. Budding
Some organisms like yeast grow small outgrowth from their body. This outgrowth is a bud. The nucleus of the parent divides. One of the nuclei moves into the bud. The newly formed bud either detaches from the parent or start producing another bud.
3. Fragmentation
Certain plants having simple body design may break or fragment into different parts. Each part now grows into a new individual. For example, Spirogyra.
4. Spore Formation
Spores are minute tiny structures on special fruiting bodies calls sporangium. These spores can blow off to far off places by air. They germinate whenever they get the favourable conditions and form the new individuals. For example, bread mould, mushroom.
5. Tissue Culture or Micropropagation
In this method, a small piece of tissue (explant) is cut from the growing tip of another plant. It is kept in the nutrient medium in the controllable conditions in the laboratory. The cells of the tissue divide rapidly and form an organised mass of cells called callus.
Callus transfers into another nutrient medium that helps in the differentiation of the plant and formation of different parts, like root stem and leaves. After the particular period of growth, the plantlets transport to the field. Many plants like asparagus, Chrysanthemum, orchids etc grow by this method.
Advantages of Asexual Reproduction
- It produces two offsprings which are the exact copies of the parent.
- A large number of individuals can be produced in a very small time.
- Plants that grow vegetatively need less attention at early stages then the plants grown by seeds.
- Many seedless varieties like grapes, pineapple, Dahlia, bananas etc grow only through the vegetative method.
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