Student Projects/Asexual reproduction in plants

              Asexual Reproduction in Plants

Asexual reproduction is a process in which new organism is produced from a single parent without the involvement of gametes or sex cells. Many unicellular and multicellular organisms reproduce asexually. In this process, parent organism either splits or a part of parent organism separates to form a new organism. There are four types of asexual reproduction. They are, vegetative propagation, budding, fragmentation, spore formation.

Vegetative propagation:

                    In vegetative propagation, parts of old plants like stems, roots, buds are used to grow a new plant. The buds which are present in dormant state in old plant are provided with suitable conditions like moisture and warmth so that they grow and develop to form a new plant. Some examples are potato plant, banana, onion, sugarcane.

Budding:

                 The word bus means small outgrowth. In the process of budding, a small bud grows on the body of parent organism and when the time comes it detaches itself to form a new organism. Example is yeast.

  Fragmentation:             

                 Fragmentation occurs in multicellular organisms. The multicellular organism breaks into two or more pieces on maturation. Each piece then grows into a new organism. Example is spirogyra.                     

Spore formation:

                      The parent plant produces hundreds of reproductive units called spores in its spore case. When this spore case of the plant bursts, these spores travel in air and land on food or soil. Here they germinate and produce new plants.