Q.What is apomixis? How is it exploited commercially in the hybrid seed industry?

This saves breeders from re-crossing parent lines every generation to maintain a hybrid.

Apomixis is a form of asexual reproduction in flowering plants that substitutes for, and outwardly resembles, true sexual reproduction: a seed is produced WITHOUT the fusion of male and female gametes. This can happen in different ways, for example when a diploid cell (such as one derived from the nucellus, or an egg cell that forms without undergoing meiosis) develops directly into an embryo, without fertilisation ever taking place.

Commercially, apomixis is highly valuable in the hybrid seed industry. Normally, an F1 hybrid variety (bred by crossing two specific parent lines to combine desirable traits and hybrid vigour) cannot be propagated reliably through its own seed, because sexual reproduction and segregation in the F2 generation would break up that favourable combination of traits. If a hybrid variety can instead be made apomictic, it produces seeds that are genetically identical to itself, generation after generation, WITHOUT requiring the breeder to repeat the original cross every single season -- fixing the hybrid vigour permanently and substantially reducing seed-production costs.

Define apomixis as 'seed without fertilisation', then connect that property directly to its commercial payoff: no need to re-cross parents to maintain a hybrid.

Confusing apomixis with ordinary vegetative propagation -- apomixis still produces a SEED (the normal sexual dispersal/propagation unit), it just does so without gamete fusion.