What vegetative propagation is
The process of producing new plants from the underground or aerial parts of a plant is called vegetative propagation. It is the main asexual method of reproduction in plants.
No gametes are made and nothing fuses. A part of the parent plant — a root, a leaf, a piece of stem — grows roots and shoots of its own and carries on as a separate plant. Because every cell in it was copied from the parent, the daughter plants obtained this way carry characteristics identical to the mother plant.
Two kinds
- Natural vegetative propagation — the plant does it itself.
- Artificial vegetative propagation — we do it to the plant.
Natural vegetative propagation is the production of new plants naturally, from parts of a plant that lie underground or above ground. It happens through a range of different vegetative parts, and the next three pages take them one at a time.
Identical, not merely similar
Every plant raised from one parent this way is a copy of it. That is the whole attraction — a farmer who has one good mango tree can have a field of that same tree — and also the whole weakness, since a disease that kills one will kill all of them.