Is it possible to perform selection of plants without seeds?

Question

When a plant spread using roots or branches I believe new plants keep same genome.

Many plants don't have fertile seeds. How it is possible to improve quality of genome (perform selection) for such plants?

Should we wait for natural mutation to spread across entire plant?

Strawberry is a good example of such plant and we know large verity among this species. How was it achieved?

It is not directly related to genome and selection per se, but in horticulture, viral phenotypic changes/symptoms are often used and transmitted, especially to obtain attractive variegation of the foliage and flowers. — A. Bourgoin, May 10 '20 at 23:13

Polypipe Wrangler · Answer 1 · 2020-05-10T11:12:44.380

1

Most commonly by breeding with a related plant - if there is one. Mutagenesis is an old technique that technically can work.

If one part of the plant has mutated, of course you can take cuttings or plant tissue culture samples.

strawberries can be bred and characteristics selected for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_of_strawberries

A good example of a difficultto breeed plant is bananas See http://www.promusa.org/blogpost363-Who-s-breeding-bananas

edited May 10 '20 at 11:12

answered May 10 '20 at 10:20

Polypipe Wrangler

what technique are used for breeding if there are no pollination/seeds? – gavenkoa May 10 '20 at 10:31
In provided article about banana researchers pollinated flowers artificially and worked with small number of survived seeds... – gavenkoa May 10 '20 at 10:38
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If you get flowers - use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubled_haploidy – Polypipe Wrangler May 10 '20 at 11:29

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