Breeding of Fruit and Plantation Crops

Advantages of apomixis in plant breeding

• Apomicts tend to conserve the genetic structure of their carrier and are also capable of maintaining the advantages of heterozygote generation after generation.


• Therefore, such a mechanism might offer a great advantage in plant breeding where genetic uniformity maintained over generation for homozygosity (in varieties of selfers), and heterozygosity (in hybrids of both selfers and out breeders) is the choicest goal.


• Additionally, apomixis may also affect an efficient exploitation of maternal influence, if any, reflecting in the resultant progenies, early or delayed because it causes perpetuation of the only maternal properties due to prohibition of fertilization.


• Maternal effects are most common in horticultural crops, particularly fruit trees and ornamental plants.