Week 6 - Pollination and Development Of Plant Embryo

In the sixth week, we learn about plant growth. Plants have meristematic tissue that make them continuously produce new organs throughout their life! talking about totipotency, it actually means the ability of an individual plant cell/tissue/organ to form whole plant. It is so fantastic! But it only applies on plant, not to human. It would be cool if we can make clone of humans but later it will be boring to see the same faces. Okay, that will never happen, only in my imagination. Today, Dr. Parameswari brings us the cultured plant so we can see with our very own eyes. The learning of totipotency is very crucial for me, because it can develop to idea of doing tissue culture that can increase the yield of products or plants in a short time. During in the class, we make a concept map about cell division and plant growth. Learning by making concept map really helps me as it summarizes all the important things and their connections that have been learnt so that I do not lost my track. Surely I will make concept map everytime I learn about something. It is easy for me to understand and relate all the ideas. 

The second day of this week, we learn a new topic about “Pollination And Development of Plant Embryo”. In this topic, we learn to look in with more details about plant reproduction. Starting with pollination which mean the transfer of pollen grain from anther to stigma then we learn about the fusion of gametes mechanism. Their embryo can be formed through zygotic embryogenesis (fertilization of gametes) or somatic embryogenesis (a process where a plant or embryo is derived from a single somatic cell or group of somatic cells). For me, this topic is interesting for me because I get to know how immobile living things like plants reproduce and the way they make it is totally unique and different. Lastly, we learn about plant regulators. I learn that plants’ common hormones are auxin, cytokinin, gibberellin, abscisic acid and ethylene. All of these hormones have different function like high amount of auxin promote elongation of stem. And ethylene help in ripening the fruits. I hope that I can apply what I have learnt from this topic. Maybe I can plant some fruits and vegetables  and sell them. That will make a big profit!