Propagation
“ So child , in the olden days , before there were Skittles , there were Tooty Frooties ” . “ Ok Dad , but what has that got to do with propagation ? ” “ Well boy , it ’s what I think of when I take heed the word totipotency ” . Tootyfrootency . See ? Once it ’s in your head it never leaves . Or maybe it ’s just my top dog … .
totipotence is the holding that plants have whereby the plant cells have the potential to grow into any part of the works or even a whole new plant . This prop is the base of all nonsexual ( ie not seeds ) procreation in industrial plant .
Plants spring up in this way are genetically identical to the parent plant , they are literally clone – precise copies – and will have the same property ( leafage shape , flower colour , growth pattern etc etc ) .
All propagation techniques except originate from seed take advantage of this totipotence property .
For model when we take a cutting , the reason that we ’re apprise to make the press cutting in certain places , near a leaf node , or skinny to the crownwork , or next to the stem is that those component part of the plant have a higher concentration of cell that are totipotent . The cay to totipotency actually work is that the plant cells have to be alive to divide , so that when they do , cells in the stand of the cut can develop into roots , say . So when we say we demand to keep a cutting active for long enough to produce root , at a cellular degree what we are really saying is that we have to keep it alive long enough for the cell to divide and re - watershed to produce rootage cell which make the roots .
Cells which have become differentiated ( ie specialize in some way ) , say to spring part of the base , or the folio , or the roots , can go through a change by first undifferentiating then redifferentiating . I think of it like the cell reversal and then drives off down a dissimilar road . cell which have not differentiated much can make the replacement easier . This is why unripened hint cuttings root faster than say hardwood cuttings . The cells in the stem of a tip newspaper clipping just have n’t been that kind of cell very long so they can morph into cubicle that make roots faster . The cells in the shank of hardwood carving have been that kind for month at least and are fairly committed to it , they take eld to reverse and drive off down the root road .
All these propagation techniques are mimicking an tantamount process that occurs of course , evolved over millions of years .
So that ’s tootyfrootency . A critical property of plant cells that makes all ( or nearly all ) of this propagation business potential .
I ’ll be back soon with more propagating news .
