Question

What is vegetative propagation? What are its advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 1

Hint: It is a type of asexual reproduction in a plant in which a new plant develops from the parent plant fragment or specialized reproductive structure.

Complete Answer:
- In asexual reproduction only one parent involves. Depending upon the conditions in which organism is reproducing, asexual reproduction have various modes. Asexual reproduction can be classified as multiple fission, plasmotomy, budding, sporulation, binary fission, fragmentation, and vegetative propagation.
- Vegetative propagation is any type of asexual reproduction in a plant in which a new plant develops from the parent plant fragment or specialized reproductive structure. Plant propagation is a mechanism by which a species or cultivar is reproduced by the plant, and can be asexual or sexual.
- Vegetative sections of plants, such as stems, leaves and roots may be used to produce new plants or growth from specialized vegetative plant parts.
- The key benefit of the techniques of vegetative propagation is that the new plants contain only one parent's genetic material so that the clones are basically parent plants. This means that it can replicate the same features forever until a plant has suitable features, assuming that the growth conditions are identical.
- This is particularly important to commercial farmers who want to reproduce the best quality plants and ensure a variety of plants or crops are reliable for sale. It can also help to keep product goods manufactured from plants or crops in good condition of taste.
- Plants also bypass the immature seedling process with vegetative propagation and thereby enter mature phase faster. For commercial plant production, this can save a lot of time and money.
- The main disadvantage is the biodiversity impact of a plant. Furthermore, if a certain plant clone is prone to certain diseases, whole plants may be destroyed.

Note: Asexual methods for plant propagation created new plants, from the vegetative sections like leaves, stems and roots of the original plant. In general, these techniques are known as vegetative propagation. Many plants can naturally reproduce, but vegetative propagation can be induced artificially.