Question

What is emasculation? Mention its importance.

Answer 1

Emasculation is used for the prevention of self-fertilisation. There is the removal of male (pollen) parts of a plant which basically involves the anthers. This helps to perform controlled pollination and breeding purposes. This mechanism is called as emasculation. In a process called bagging emasculated flowers are covered with a bag to prevent contamination of its stigma with unwanted pollen. However if the female parent produces unisexual flowers, there is no requirement for emasculation.

This method helps to perform cross pollination which brings about variation in the type of plant. The bisexual flowers can be made to cross with another plant type to produce desired variety.