2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
An article for those who are intimidated by the expression "clone", carbon copy doubles, and who compare Dolly the sheep with this term. Cloned plants in our gardens, flower gardens and gardens are not uncommon. Read on for details and scientific rationale
What is a "clone"
If we literally consider the word "clone", then it has Greek roots and means a shoot, branch, offspring, twig. The expression has stuck in scientific circles since 1963. Biologists used them to designate the emergence of a new organism from a whole organ or a particle of the mother's body.
Each of us involuntarily encounters plant cloning and often does it on our own. For example, you want to propagate currants and dug in a branch. The separated part of a branch with roots, transplanted to another place, is an independent clone organism. The same happens with the rooting of a cut of a rose, chrysanthemum, violet leaf.
We clone the plants we need in different ways: half a bush or use a leaf. It is important to place it in a favorable environment for development. The new plant that appears will not differ from the mother and will inherit all its qualities.
How plants clone themselves
Self-cloning is widespread in nature. For many of us, this is an amazing surprise. Garden strawberries are a prime example of such reproduction. Every year we see how she releases a mustache-shoots, called "stolons" by biologists. At the ends of the antennae, rosettes develop, which actively take root. As a result, the tendril dies off and an independent new plant appears, called a clone. Like strawberries, creeping buttercup, cinquefoil goose and others reproduce.
We are surrounded by many natural clones. Forest blueberry is a "fan" of cloning, as it has two types of shoots: underground and surface. Vertical ones bear foliage and fruits, and horizontal ones are underground and give life to new plants, forming lateral shoots in the form of young bushes. This is how blueberries clone themselves, which is why their plantations are so vast in the forests.
Cloning record holders
Many aquatic plants are masters of cloning. They are familiar to aquarists and owners of artificial reservoirs in the country. Famous record holders among them are representatives of the Vodokrasov group. They are found in rivers and lakes and spread like wild strawberries with antennae, but along with this they supply their clones with "provisions" - they release tubers with antennae with a supply of food. The most famous Arrowhead Ordinary, Vodokras (small water lilies), Elodea Canada, called "water plague" for its unsurpassed ability to clone.
Clones in the animal world
An amazing fact - animals have mastered cloning. Many people know from school the small predator hydra, which often reproduces asexually. Cloning occurs due to the formation of a kidney on the trunk. As it grows, it has a mouth and tentacles, as a result a young hydra buds from the mother's body. A similar reproduction was mastered by ascidians, resembling tadpole fish and chordates.
Gardening and cloning
Replication of copies in nature has long been borrowed by man. We are most interested in plants. Dividing the bush, grafting, grafting, layering, separating the strawberry whiskers - cloning, which is commonly called vegetative propagation.
Thanks to scientists, from the beginning of the 20th century, work began on growing a new plant from a minimal part of the mother's body. As a result, it was possible to successfully cultivate any fragments. Moreover, you can use scanty parts of the source material, consisting of a couple of dozen cells. These particles, placed in a favorable environment, grow and reproduce a full-fledged organism.
The environment for the development of clone plants is sucrose, a spectrum of mineral salts and vitamins. There are necessarily growth regulators and substances that direct development in the right direction. You thought correctly - these are hormones. Gardening enthusiasts are often alarmed by the presence of hormones during cultivation.
In 1960, scientists proved the fact of the harmless effect of hormones on plants, replacing them with coconut juice. Coconut nuts are known to contain the same hormones that we experimented with. They do not harm or change the nature of the future plant. Therefore, there is no need to worry about the presence of artificial components - the nutrient medium remains natural.
Today, reproduction from cells is called clonal micropropagation. Orchids, roses and rhododendrons loved by many growers are produced by this method. This technology is perfect and reproduces / propagates plants in the required quantity, since some species are only capable of producing one shoot per year.
The uniqueness of clonal reproduction is the guarantee of the absence of diseases and the preservation of the full potential of the mother plant. This is due to the sterile conditions in which the work takes place. Today, cloning technology allows obtaining flawless planting material of the highest quality.
