what are the advantages of vegetative propagation?

(i) Plant which do not produce seeds, are propagated by the method e.g., sugar-cane, banana, potato, rose, orange, seedless grapes, jasmines, chrysanthemum, etc.

(ii) Vegetative propagation is a cheaper, easier and more rapid method of propagation in plants than growing plants from their seeds; for example, many lilies grow very slowly and take 4 to 7 years to developed flowers, when grown their seeds, but flowers are produced only after a year or two when grown vegitatively.

(iii) The trait (character) of a plant is preserved by vegetative reproduction.

(iv) Thus, the plants generated from vegetative means requires less time to grow and to have the advantages of being more uniform and genetically similar to the parent stock. Another advantage is that in propagation by this methods, the plants skip the risky seedling stage in which a number of plants die under adverse conditions. Many seedless verities of grapes, banana and oranges are produced by this method.

However, there are some disadvantages associated with this mode of reproduction. Plants grown by this method lose vigour and become prone to diseases.

Vegetative reproduction is very useful to plant growers because of the following reasons:-

1.It allows them to produce new plants quickly.Using plant parts takes less time than waiting for seeds to grow.For example, fruit plants grown by this method start bearing fruits much earlier than plants grown from seeds.

2.The plants produced by this method are exact copies of the parent plant . They have no variations.This is also an advantage for plant growers as they can produce exact copies of aplant with the required characteristics, such as resistance to disease.All plants produced will have the same characteristics.

3.Plants propagated vegetatively usually need less attention than plants grown from seeds, in the early stages of growth.

4.New varieties of plants having required characteristics can be developed by this method.

  Many food, fruits and ornamental plants, such as bananas, pineapple, rose, sugarcane, etc., are normally grown by vegetative reproduction. Some plants do not produce seeds.They can only be propagated vegetatively, e.g. bananas and pineapples.

There are also many disadvantages for vegetative propagation.

• vegetative propagation develope offsprings quicker than offsprings produced by sexual reproduction.
• the offsprings  are exact copies of the parent plant

hope it helps:)