Strategies For Enhancement In Food Production

Somatic hybridization is a tissue-culture technique in which the cell walls of plant cells are digested with enzymes to obtain naked protoplasts, which are then fused to combine the genomes of two different varieties or species without sexual reproduction. A classic illustration is the attempted fusion of potato and tomato protoplasts to produce a 'pomato', demonstrating how desirable traits from two plants can be united in one somatic hybrid. Vegetative propagation is incorrect because it produces new plants from vegetative parts like stems, roots, or leaves of a single parent, without fusing protoplasts of two varieties. Sexual hybridization is wrong since it involves the fusion of male and female gametes through pollination and fertilisation, not the fusion of somatic cell protoplasts. Apomixis is incorrect because it is the formation of seeds without fertilisation, producing clones of the mother plant, and does not involve protoplast fusion. As described in NCERT Class 12, Chapter 9 (Strategies for Enhancement in Food Production), somatic hybridization can overcome barriers to conventional sexual crossing. As a logical check, only somatic hybridization matches the fusion of protoplasts from two varieties to yield a hybrid like the pomato, confirming it as the correct process.