Introduction

Reproduction is the process by which living organisms produce young ones of their own kind. It is essential for every species: it carries the species forward from one generation to the next and so keeps life itself continuous. Every organism has a way of reproducing that suits its own biology, and all of these ways fall into just two broad categories:

i. Asexual reproduction, in which a single parent produces offspring without any fusion of gametes.

ii. Sexual reproduction, in which two compatible gametes fuse.

This chapter follows that division. It first surveys asexual reproduction in lower plants (fragmentation, budding and spore formation) and the natural and artificial vegetative reproduction of higher plants, and then works through sexual reproduction in flowering plants in the order the events actually happen: the structure of the anther and the development of the male gametophyte, the structure of the anatropous ovule and the development of the female gametophyte, pollination and its agents, the outbreeding devices that favour cross-pollination, pollen-pistil interaction, double fertilization, and the post-fertilization development of endosperm, embryo, seed and fruit, closing with apomixis, parthenocarpy and polyembryony.

The Maharashtra State Board (MSBSHSE) Class 12 Biology syllabus is aligned with the NCERT/CBSE curriculum, so the ground covered here overlaps closely with the NCERT Class 12 Biology chapter on sexual reproduction in flowering plants, while also keeping the asexual and vegetative reproduction topics that the older NCERT chapter on reproduction in organisms used to carry. Students preparing for the HSC board exam and for NEET will meet the same concepts, terms and diagrams in both.