Plant Cloning Flashcards Preview

OCR Biology F215 > Plant Cloning > Flashcards

Flashcards in Plant Cloning Deck (4)
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Q

What are the advantages of using plant cloning in agriculture?

A
  • desirable genetic characteristics are always passed on to clones e.g. High yield
  • plants that are sterile can be reproduced e.g. Banana
  • plants that take a long time to produce seeds can be reproduced quickly
1
Q

Describe the production of artificial clones of plants from tissue culture

A
  • a small piece of tissue is taken from the plant to be cloned (explant)
  • the explant is then placed on a nutrient growth medium
  • cells in the tissue divide but do not differentiate, instead they form a mass of undifferentiated cells (callus)
  • after a few weeks, single callus cells can be removed from the mass and placed on a growing medium containing plant hormones that encourage shoot growth
  • after a further few weeks, the growing shoots are transferred onto a different growing medium containing different hormone concentrations that encourages root growth
  • the growing plants are then transferred to a greenhouse to be acclimatised and grown further before they are planted outside
2
Q

What are the disadvantages of using plant cloning in agriculture?

A
  • undesirable genetic characteristics are passed on to clones
  • lack of genetic variability (single disease could kill all)
  • production costs are high
3
Q

How do elm trees produce natural clones by vegetative propagation?

A
  • a sucker is a shoot that grows from the shallow roots of an elm tree
  • suckers grow from sucker buds that are scattered around the trees root system, these buds are usually dormant
  • during time of stress or when a tree is dying the buds are activated and suckers begin to form
  • suckers can pop up metres away from the parent tree, which can help to avoid the stress that triggered their growth
  • they eventually form completely separate trees - clones of the tree that the suckers grew from