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A-Level Biology OCR A

Plants Numbers Production Large Infected Describe Arguments Micropropagation

This flashcard outlines the advantages and disadvantages of micropropagation. It covers benefits such as rapid production of genetically uniform, disease-free plants and the propagation of rare species, as well as drawbacks like the risk of monoculture, high costs, and vulnerability to infection.

This flashcard outlines the advantages and disadvantages of micropropagation. It covers benefits such as rapid production of genetically uniform, disease-free plants and the propagation of rare species, as well as drawbacks like the risk of monoculture, high costs, and vulnerability to infection.

Front Describe the arguments for and against micropropagation.
Back Evaluating micropropagation:

For
  • Allows rapid production of large numbers of plants with known genetics which yield good crops
  • Produces disease-free plants
  • Allows production of viable numbers of plants after genetic modification of plant cells
  • Ways of growing plants that are naturally relatively infertile or difficult to grow from seed eg orchids
  • Way of reliably increasing the numbers of rare or endangered plants


Against
  • Monoculture produced - many plants that are genetically which are all suceptible to same disease/changes in environment
  • Relatively expensive, requires skilled workers
  • Explants and plantlets are vulnerable to infection 
  • If source material is infected with virus, all clones will be infected
  • In some cases large numbers of new plants are lost during process

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