Plant meristems

• they can be found in meristem regions in the roots of the plant
• they can differentiate into all cell types - can be used to create clones of whole plants
• ADVANTAGES:

  • rare species of plants can be cloned to prevent extinction
  • plants with desirable traits can be cloned to produce large numbers of identical plants
  • fast and cheap
• DISADVANTAGES:

  • cloned plants are genetically identical, so a whole crop is at risk of being destroyed by a single diease or gentic defect