Test: Reproduction in Plants- 1

• Reproductive parts include flowers, fruits and seeds whereas the vegetative parts of the plant are leaf, stem, roots and leaves. The chief function of the flowers is sexual reproduction. They achieve fertilization with the process of pollination.
• Flower is the reproductive part of an angiospermic plant containing male and female reproductive organs.

The male and the female gamete are the reproductive cells which are formed by the germ cells. These gametes are fuse and the process is known as fertilization. This is an important step in the sexual reproduction which results in the formation of the zygote which develops to form a new individual.

In flowering plants, male gamete is formed inside Anther present at the top of Stamen.

Ovary is enlarged basal portion of the pistil, the female organ of a flower. The ovary contains ovules, which develop into seeds upon fertilization. The ovary itself will mature into a fruit, either dry or fleshy, enclosing the seeds.

Flowers are called bisexual if they bear both androecium and gynoecium.

• Budding is a type of asexual reproduction in which a new organism develops from an outgrowth or bud due to cell division at one particular site. The small bulb-like projection coming out from the yeast cell is called a bud.
• Organisms such as hydra use regenerative cells for reproduction in the process of budding.

Those plants whose seeds contain two cotyledons are called dicotyledonous plant. Gram is a dicotyledonous plant.

• Scion is the detached living part of the plant which is grafted to the stalk by the process of grafting.
• Grafting is a horticulture technique where the living detached portion of the plant is used to regenerate the growth.
• One plant is selected for its roots and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is selected for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion.
• The joining of scion and stalk is known as inosculation. The technique is mostly used in the asexual mode of reproduction. 
  
  

• Corn is a monoecious plant, a hermaphrodite, where both the male and female reproductive parts are present in the same plant.
• Reproduction is carried out sexually. It is wind-pollinated.
• The tassel that springs up from the top of the plant after the leaves have appeared are the male parts of the corn plant. It comprises branches which hold male flowers. These male flowers produce male sex cells which are contained in the pollen grains.
• The ear is the female floral organ which evolves from the head of the shank. It is a tiny structure that emerges out of a leaf node usually situated above the ground and below the tassel.
• Pollination occurs when pollen grains fall on the silk (hair-like structures on each egg) when they are exposed.
• Successively, male sex cells move down each silk to meet a single egg after which fertilization takes place. The egg, post-fertilization, matures into a kernel which holds an embryo and eventually emerges into a new corn plant.
• However, the occurrence of silk and its exposure to pollen grains are very rare. Hence, to produce corn on a larger scale, the reproduction process of corn is carried out manually by fusing pollen grains with the silk of the corn.

Asexually produced identical organisms are called clone. They contain similar characteristics.