Question

1. What are the reproductive strategies for plant reproduction?

Answer 1

Reproductive strategies of plants are categorized into two main methods asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction.

• Asexual reproduction

Asexual reproduction is the process of giving rise to younger ones without fusion of gametes. Here only one parent is needed to give rise the younger ones.The lower plants reproduce vegetatively through budding, fission fragmentation resting buds and spores.These methods of reproduction by vegetative parts of the plant is form of asexual reproduction. Among flowering plants every parts of the body such as roots stem leaves and buds takes place in vegetative propagation. In this the plant biotype can be reserved. Vegetative propagation is divided into two parts-

I) Natural vegetative propagation- in this method of propagation roots, underground stem, suckers, rhizomes, corms, bulbs, tubers, creeping stems etc are used for reproduction.

2) Artificial vegetative propagation- This method is man made and created by plant growers for commercial production of crops. Some of methods are like cuttings, layering, mound layering ,air layering, grafting, bud grafting, propagation by plant tissue culture etc. Vegetative propagation is the only method of reproduction in those plants which have lost their capacity to produce seeds, have small quantities of viable seeds, have poor seed viability.

• Sexual reproduction

In flowering plants involves the production and fusion of male and female gametes either by the same parent or by different parents. The fusion of male and female gametes form zygote which develop into new organism. It starts with the development of male gametophyte and female gametophyte. Pollination takes place in which pollen transfer to the female reproductive part. When the gametes fuse form zygote which develop to embryo. For the development gives rise to new plant. Because the offsprings receive chromosomes from two different parents, they are not identical genetically.