Give me a living cell of any plant and I will give you a thousand plants of the same type", Is this only a slogan or is it scientifically possible? Write your comments and justify them.
It is scientifically possible to grow thousand plants from a living cell of any plant and this process is called micropropagation. The property of plant cells that helped them to grow into a new plant is totipotency.
Micropropagation is the use of plant cell culture to regenerate large number of plants. This results in genetically identical plants and is also called clonal propagation.
Hence, the desirable characters are kept constant for many generations. Micropropagation is widely used in forestry and in floriculture. Plants can be obtained throughout the year under controlled conditions.
What is the difference between a breed and a species? Give an example for each category.
A breed is a specific group of animals or plants having homogenous appearance, behaviour and other characteristics that distinguish it from other animals or plants of the same species, e.g., Afghan shepherd, American bulldog are breeds of dog.
Species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. It can be defined as the largest group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. e.g., lion, cow, dog are species.
Plants raised through tissue cultures are clones of the 'parent' plant. Discuss the utility of these plants.
Plants raised through tissue culture are very useful because they are identical copy of the parent plant. This is of great use when desirable traits of the parent plant have to be maintained.
Discuss the importance of testing of new plant varieties in a geographically vast country like India.
Before the new plants are generated through plant breeding programs, they need to be evaluated for their yield and other agronomic traits of quality, disease resistance, etc.
The testing is done on the farmers' field for at least three growing seasons, at different locations in the country representing all the agroclimatic zones, where the crop is usually grown. The material is evaluated in comparison to the best available local crop cultivar known as a check or reference cultivar.
Define the term 'stress' for plants. Discuss briefly the two types of stress encountered by plants.
Stress for plants can be defined as any external factor that negatively influences plant growth, productivity, reproductive capacity or survival. This includes a wide range of factors which can be broadly divided into abiotic or environmental stress factors like salinity, extreme temperatures, drought, etc., and biotic or biological stress factors.