What is parthenocarpy?
1 Answer
Parthenocarpy allows a good reproduction rate with low costs, but makes the population genentically fragile.
Explanation:
Parthenocarpy is a type of reproduction by which a plant produces its fruits without any kind of fecundation. In a genetic point of view, the offspring generated through parthenocarpy are clones of its parents.
This mechanism allows organisms to reproduce fastly and with few costs, since it spends no resources in the interindividual fecundation process and its related mechanisms; furthermore, this way reproduction is guarateed, since it does not dependo on other individuals. By this, a single plant can spread itself easily and colonize a big area in a small period.
However, there is a great problem in building a population with clones. Since all the individuals are genetically identical, if any one of them has a fragility or weakness (e.g. against a pathogen such as the fungi), all of them will have the same issue, and small problems that would never harm a big and diverse population can devastate a parthenocarpic population in a small amount of time.
