Question

List with brief explanation three advantages of practising vegetative propagation for growing some types of plants?

Answer 1

Hint: Vegetative propagation also known as vegetative cloning is a form of asexual reproduction occurring in plants in which a new plant grows from a fragment or a cutting of the parent plant. This reproduction occurs in many plants naturally but also can be induced artificially. It makes use of vegetative parts of the plants like leaves, stems and roots or through specialized vegetative plant parts.

Complete explanation:
The three main advantages of vegetative reproduction are given below.
1. Firstly, the produced offspring are clones of their parent plant. If the parent plant has desirable traits, its advantageous genetic information can be passed on to its offspring. This advantage is economically beneficial for commercial cultivators to clone a particular plant and ensure quality throughout their crops.
2. The complex process of sexual reproduction involving organs such as flowers, seeds and fruits are avoided in vegetative propagation. For example, in commercial cultivation developing a cultivar with desirable traits through sexual reproduction is extremely difficult therefore farmers use vegetative methods like grafting and budding to ensure the consistency of the new cultivar.
3. Vegetative propagation also allows plants to skip the immature seedling phase and reach the mature phase faster. In nature, the chances for a plant to successfully reach maturity are low and hence this method saves a lot of time and money of farmers and allows for faster crop overturn.


Note:
Like any other reproduction method, vegetative propagation also has a major disadvantage that it prevents genetic diversity of the species which can lead to reductions in crop yields. All the plants are genetically identical and therefore if they are susceptible to a pathogenic plant virus, bacteria or fungi it can wipe out the entire crops.