Artificial seeds and their applications

Abstract

Plant propagation using artificial or synthetic seeds developed from somatic and not zygotic embryos opens up new vistas in agriculture. Artificial seeds make a promising technique for propagation of transgenic plants, non-seed producing plants, polyploids with elite traits and plant lines with problems in seed propagation. Being clonal in nature the technique cuts short laborious selection procedure of the conventional recombination breeding and can bring the advancements of biotechnology to the doorsteps of the farmer in a cost-effective manner.