Talk:Garlic Mustard

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[edit] Self-fertilization does not result in identical offspring

Self-fertilization is really extreme inbreeding. Simply because a plant mates with itself does not imply that progeny must inherit the same genes. The gametes of an individual are not identical, so they can combine in novel ways even in self-fertilization, in this case tending to lead to reduced genetic diversity.

This abstract represents an example in sea anemones. I quote: "However, brooded young of heterozygous individuals were not identical to their parent. but showed 1:2:1 phenotypic segregation ratios consistent with reproduction by self-fertilization." Homozygous individuals would of course be identical in that trait to the parent, since only one particular allele can be inherited. However, heterozygous individuals, upon self-mating, produce the 1:2:1 ratio expected in simple Mendelian inheritance.

This is from what appear to be lecture notes for a class from the University of Connecticut: [1]. Paraphrased: in heterozygous self-fertilization, half the progeny are heterozygous and half are homozygous.

Indeed, Mendel himself used self-fertilization. It can be used to determine whether a line is true breeding or not.

The point is that self-fertilization does not necessarily result in identical offspring. Self-fertilization- is a sexual process, not an asexual one, and therefore the progeny are different.-♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, here is the problem - not all plants or living things are same, so your lecture notes might be true for most life forms but not true in all instantacnes and not in this case particularly. This is true for many of things you learn in school. In the case of this particular plant the offspring are identically in non out-breeding populations. This is what the sources say, I can even confirm this by looking at the plants of this species growing around my part of the world. There are two distinct populations of this plant growing around here, each started from One single plant and all the resulting plants are the same size and the foliage is identically. One population has plants that grow 4 feet tall with no scent to the thick foliage, the other population is 2.5 feet tall and has a strong scent of garlic and thin leaves. These populations produce identical plants from seeds maintaining very homogeneous looking plants. Hardyplants (talk) 03:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

If the parent plant is heterozygous at some loci, then the offspring will not all be identical. But, if the parent plant is homozygous (pure-breeding) for all loci, then the progeny will all be identical. Self-fertilization (as a life-style) tends to push breeding lines to fixation of all alleles in the line, at which point the offspring from such plants will all be identical, despite meiosis. As long as there is some outcrossing, this won't happen, but for obligate self-fertilizing plants, sooner or later it will. Though this does not mean that all breeding lines will fix to the same set of alleles, of course. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I am looking over some of the lit for this plant and it seems that plants are self pollinating before the flowers open and can out cross when the flowers are open, so you can have a wide mix of different plants produced. I hate to grow more of it but I just might cross the two populations I have here and see what I get. The text could be correct to "say in some cases plants from self pollination are identical" Encycopetey is correct that this is not always going to be the case, as one source says that self pollinated plants can show great genetic diversity. Hardyplants (talk) 03:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)