Apomixis in the era of biotechnology

The adaptive success of living organisms depends on the maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium between creating new genetic combinations and fixing those which are more adapted to the present environment. Sexual reproduction is universally the main route to recombine genes in the short term; on the other hand, different strategies have been adopted to fix the genetic composition of individuals demon- strating high fitness. In plants, genotypes may be “immortalized” via vegetative propagation or “photocopied” by selfing of highly homozygous individuals. A third, more technically sophisticated pathway is represented by the implementation of apomixis, where a functional sexual machine is short-circuited to asexually produce embryos with the fixed genotype of the mother plant. This developmental sophisti- cation represents a challenging research field for the reproduction biologist and a desirable trait for the plant breeder to be used in seed production schemes of elite varieties.