Plant propagation is the process of making new plants. If you have planted seeds and it sprouted or if you have taken the cuttings of a plant and planted it in the ground and it rooted then you have performed plant propagation.

Plant propagation can be classified into two;

1, Sexual Propagation

2, Asexual Propagation

Sexual Propagation

Sexual propagation produces new plants from seeds. Sexual propagation is very easy and it does not require any equipment or technique. It is simply nature’s way of producing plants from seeds.

Advantages of sexual propagation

1, Seeds are readily available for planting

2, No skills needed in planting seeds

Disadvantages of Sexual Propagation

1, Planting of seeds does not always guarantee plants that will have the same characteristics as the parent tree

2, Planting of seeds leads to the plants going through a very long juvenile period before it starts producing fruits.

Asexual Propagation

Asexual plant propagation uses vegetative parts of the plant to make a clone, or an exact genetic copy, of the parent plant. Asexual propagation has several advantages, including the ability to genetically reproduce the parent plant. In most cases, it allows plants to produce fruits much earlier than plants planted by seeds.

Several methods are available for the asexual propagation of plants, These methods includes; Cuttings, Air-Layering, Budding, Grafting and Tissue culture.

Advantages of asexual propagation

1, Plants produced by asexual propagation methods have the same characteristics as the parent tree.

2, Plants produced by asexual propagation methods have a very short juvenile stage, hence they start producing fruits much earlier than the same plant propagated by seeds

3, It allows commercial orchards to plant seedlings that have the same characteristics hence fruit size, taste, color etc will be the same for every tree.

Disadvantages of asexual Propagation

1, Specialized skills and equipment is needed for the asexual propagation of plants

2, It takes a lot of time to produce plants by the method of asexual propagation when compared to the time it takes a seed of the same plant to germinate.

3, Some trees produced from asexual propagation techniques like air layering and cuttings do not have tap roots, such trees can be easily uprooted in areas with very strong winds.

Cuttings

Cuttings are  parts of plants removed from a parent plant and rooted to form new plants. Cuttings are usually taken from the stems and these stems are inserted in soil or water medium until they start having roots. The cuttings are removed and transplanted once they have roots and new leaves.

Air Layering

Air layering is a method of propagating new trees and shrubs from stems still attached to the parent plant. The phloem and cambium is removed over 3 cm section of the stem and the portion of stem (8cm long) immediately above the place where the phloem and cambium layer was removed is wrapped with either moist sand, moist saw dust, moist coconut coir or damp moss  to encourage roots to form. This method allows of very large stems and branches to be turned into new trees within a very short period.

Grafting

Grafting is the joining of two plants together. The upper part of the graft (the scion) becomes the top of the plant, the lower portion (the Rootstock) becomes the root system or part of the trunk

Only the growth on the scion is desirable all other growth on the rootstock should always be removed.

Budding

Budding is a grafting technique in which a single bud from the desired scion is attached to a rootstock rather than an entire scion containing many buds. Only the growth from the bud from the Scion is desirable, all other buds on the Rootstock must be removed.