What is meant by Agamospermy?
1 Answer
Agamospermy is the asexual production of seeds and embryos without fertilization or meiosis.
Explanation:
Agamospermy is the clonal reproduction through seeds. Offsprings produced through agamospermy are generally identical to the parent plant.
There are three types of agamospermy namely, adventive embryony, recurrent agamospermy, and non-recurrent agamospermy.
It mainly occurs in two forms :
Gametophytic apomixis: the embryo arises from an unfertilised egg cell (parthenogenesis) in a gametophyte that was produced from a cell that did not complete meiosis.
Sporophytic apomixis: an embryo is formed directly (not from a gametophyte) from the neucellus or integument tissue.
Agamospermy i.e. asexual reproduction through seeds, occurs in flowering plants through many different mechanisms. It occurs in 33 families of flowering plants, and has evolved multiple times from sexual relatives. However, agamospermy can also occur in non-flowering plants such as ferns through a process known as apogamy.
