Sweet potatoes blossom and produce seeds. Why not plant sweet potatoes with seeds?

Summary: Sweet potato flowers will bear seeds, why not plant seeds sweet potato?

Sweet potato blossoms have seeds, but sweet potato reproduction is not with seeds.

Sweet potato as early as in the Ming Dynasty Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" has recorded "sweet potato tonic deficiency, spleen appetizer." It has a long history. When I was a child, I planted sweet potato seedlings at home, and I planted sweet potato seedlings myself scientifically. I remember very clearly that the adults at home buried the sweet potato seeds in the soil. When it took root and germinated, they grew a lot of vines. They cut them into 30-40 cm roots one by one with scissors, and then buried them in the soil, waiting to eat sweet potatoes.

At that time, I was also curious why sweet potatoes were different from other crops. Wheat and corn had to be sown. The adults didn't give a reason either. But sweet potato blossom is seen, very rare. Generally, they saw purple flowers in the morning, and then they withered in the afternoon. They didn't see seeds, so they always thought sweet potatoes didn't bear seeds.

After growing up, through the information, read the literature, now understand, the original sweet potato flowering is fruiting, that is to say, there are seeds in the fruit. The sweet potato we know is the rhizome of sweet potato, not the fruit of sweet potato. Sweet potato flowers, like pumpkin flowers, are bisexual flowers with a stamen in the middle.

But sweet potato is a cross-pollinated crop, self-pollination basically does not bear fruit. Sweet potato fruit is very similar to morning glory, is a diameter of 5-7mm round capsule, sweet potato fruit was dry yellow or brown. Sweet potato flowering is also a great geographical difference, in our northern sweet potato flowering rarely, sunshine can reach certain conditions. In the autumn and winter potato area in southern China, that is, south of 23 degrees north latitude, sweet potato can bloom naturally.

Why don't you use seeds for that kind of sweet potato?

Sweet potato seed skin is relatively hard, and very thick, not easy to absorb water, germination is more difficult. So sweet potatoes are sown without seeds. But sweet potato seeds are the source of breeding new varieties. Select the offspring of shape segregation to breed new varieties. Sweet potato depends on potato mass for reproduction is asexual reproduction, so under natural conditions, the probability of gene mutation is very low, the probability of producing new varieties is very low, through this method to cultivate new varieties is more difficult.

However, this method of cultivation also has the advantage that it can preserve the specific shape of good sweet potatoes. After the sweet potato seeds are broken or soaked in concentrated sulfuric acid, they are washed and placed in clear water to absorb water, and then placed under appropriate temperature and environmental conditions, they can germinate.

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