Vegetative propagation (& advantages)

in previous couple of videos we have covered these four kinds of asexual reproduction and so in this video we will focus on vegetative propagation so let's see what that is all right so what is it it's a kind of asexual reproduction that happens in plants so whenever a sexual revolution happens in plants we call it a vegetative propagation but again what exactly is it so let me ask you a question how do you usually grow new plants well you might say we take seeds and sew them into the soil and then you give it enough water make sure it has nutrients and the with enough sunlight it can grow into a new plant now that's great if the plants can readily make viable seeds meaning seeds that can work but what if they can't for example roses can make seeds of course but not all those seeds might work some of those seeds if you saw them they just may not grow into new plants and in some cases like in the case of banana the seeds are so small that when you eat banana the seeds get eaten up in such cases you can see the chances of reproduction using seeds are very tiny so how do we readily grow these plants well there's a method to do that without using seeds and that's what this vegetative propagation is all about it's a method of reproduction without using seeds but how does it work well let me give an example let's take the example of Rose itself now like I said the raw seeds may not be viable meaning if you saw them it doesn't guarantee it'll grow into a new rose plant so you know what you can do suppose this rose plant is pretty old it's about to die what you can do is you can take cuttings of its stem so you take the cutting of its stem and you sew that instead similarly you take another cutting of that stem and you sew that and then if you give it enough water and nutrients and sunlight you will find that they will grow into new rose plants voila reproduction without seeds so in this example we took the stem cuttings right but you would also take the root cuttings if you wanted you could also take a leaf if you wanted basically take any vegetative part of the plan the stem the root and the leaves that taut that together called their vegetative part of the plants okay so if you take the vegetative part of the plants and you saw them you can make new plans from that and that's why this is called vegetative propagation in contrast the flowers and the fruits are the sexual parts of the plan and so when they are used in reproduction we call that sexual reproduction which we will talk about in greater detail in future videos so we can now write this down why is it called vegetative propagation because we are using the vegetative part we're using the vegetative part what are the vegetative parts the stem the roots or the leaves we're using the vegetative part to make new plans to propagate new plants vegetative propagation and speaking about leaves that reminds me of a very famous example of vegetative propagation which is seen in a plant called Brio phylum so what are we looking at these are actually the leaves of the plant but it's a little different because if you look carefully from the tip you can find there are tiny birds growing and these birds grow into their own tiny plants which we call as plantlets they have their own leaves and their own growth which we can't see over here but eventually as they grow the whole leaf is gonna become heavy and eventually is gonna fall onto the ground and then each of this plant late-- can can grow into a new briar phylum that's pretty cool right this is also a beautiful example of vegetative propagation and something you might have to remember for your exams anyways before we wind up this video now let's pull it all together and see if we can write some advantages of this vegetative propagation so what are the advantages can you pause for a while and think about what advantages you find over here alright let's see so the first one is something that we already spoke about it helps in reproduction of the plants that cannot make viable seeds so let's write that down it helps in reproduction of plants which cannot make viable viable seeds to write down the second advantage we need to remember one thing that although this is the preferred method of reproduction for such plants you can do vegetative propagation for any plant even if there's a plant which can make seeds readily even for those you can vegetatively propagated so what do you think is the advantage of this over using seeds well this is asexual reproduction and you might remember that in asexual reproduction the offsprings will have the exact will be the exact same copy as the parent because it's the same DNA that's getting copied over here which means that if there's a particular trait that you like in the parent plant you can make sure that all the offsprings will have that specific trait for example consider mangoes imagine there is a there's a mango tree which has unusually large mangoes now if you want to grow more trees like that you vegetatively propagated you make sure that all its offsprings will have those unusually large mangoes in contrast if you start using mango seeds you cannot guarantee that because seeds are formed due to sexual reproduction which we'll talk about in the future their combination of DNA happens and when combination of DNA happens there is a mix of traits and that may not guarantee that all the mangoes in that in the new tree will be having those you know desired traits so the second important characteristic advantage over here is that desired it's can be passed along desire traits can be passed along okay and the third advantage I'm going to talk about which may not be very obvious is that when you vegetatively propagate is a good chance they can bear fruits and flowers earlier or faster compared to when using seeds so let me just write it down can bear can bear fruits and flowers faster which means if you are in this industry if you're in this business of selling flowers and fruits this could be economical to you and why is this true though well that's because you are not using seeds so there is no germination so all of that germination time and everything is skipped and fast forwarded it's kind of like missing your childhood and directly growing into an adult I don't know how much fun that would be but it's okay plans you don't have emotions because they don't have a neuro system anyways that pretty much sums up this video and so to summarize some important points a vegetative propagation is an asexual reproduction in plants where we use the vegetative parts like stem and root leaves to grow new plants so it's reproduction without seeds it's perfect for the plans that cannot make viable seeds like roses or bananas or sugar canes or jasmine there are many examples and one important example to remember from the exam point of view is this bryophyte 'm which starts making tiny plantlets from the tip of its leaf and eventually when the leaf becomes heavy enough it go it's falls onto the ground and new bryophyte and plants can start growing from that and because the reproduction is asexual you can pass along any desired trait you want and because we are skipping its childhood it's germination time it can bear fruits and flowers faster