• Question: If plants selfpolinnated ho come they dont mutate?

    Asked by to Del, John on 21 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: John Foster

      John Foster answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      I don’t know much about plants, but I think if they are self pollinating that would meant that the DNA from the male and female parts of that plant would be the same. That would remove the chance of variation in the new plant. I don’t know if this would eliminate mutations though. Two plants that have different DNA when they pollinate each other you get an offspring which has aspects of both plants.

Comments

  • Photo: Mo Rassul

    Mo Rassul commented on :

    Point mutations do happen with plants, obviously it is more likely with self pollonation, hence the reason plants tend to have other ways for pollonation. Plus if they self pollonated all the time there would be no variations and a whole species of plant would be easy to kill in one go