Question

Why is vegetative propagation practised for growing some types of plants?

Answer 1

Vegetative propagation occurs in its leaves, roots, and stem as an asexual method of plant reproduction. This can happen through the fragmentation and regeneration of particular plant vegetative sections.

Complete Answer:
- The process of raising the number of plants of a given species or cultivar is plant propagation. Propagation can take place by sexual or asexual means. Horticulturalists have evolved asexual methods of propagation over the years that use vegetative sections of plants. This facilitates the development of plants in ways that nature does not replicate.
- New plants from vegetative parts of the original plant, such as the leaves, stems and roots, are developed by asexual plant propagation techniques. In general, these methods are referred to as vegetative propagation.
- Many plants can naturally reproduce this way, but it is also possible to artificially induce vegetative propagation.

Vegetative propagation advantages:
- The key benefit of vegetative propagation strategies is that the new plants contain only one parent's genetic material, so they are effectively the parent plant's clones.
- This means that you can replicate the same traits forever once you have a plant with desirable traits, as long as the growing conditions remain identical.
- This is particularly important for commercial growers who want the best quality plants to replicate and ensure the consistency of a variety of plants or crops available for sale.
- This can also help to keep products produced from plants or crops consistent in quality and taste. They cultivate new tea plants, for example, in Zealong's tea plantation, using cuttings to ensure consistency in their tea's taste and quality.
- Plants also skip the immature seedling process with vegetative propagation, and thus enter the mature phase earlier. For commercial plant production, this can save a lot of time and money.
- For example, to grow large enough (from a cutting) to be ready for harvesting and processing into tea, a tea plant takes 3-4 years. It will take much longer to develop from seed.

Note: The biggest drawback is the ability for a species to have an effect on biodiversity. There is also the potential to lose whole crops if a specific plant clone is susceptible to such diseases. One way to defend against these problems is to set up a genetic bank of seeds or plants (a germplasm collection), which is standard practise in different crop sectors.