Plants that had lost only part of chromosome 16, though, were often still apomictic.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

The advantage of apomictic seed for the companies is that they could dispense with the costly process of hybridisation.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering: No sex, please, we��re plants | The

If apomictic seeds are cheap enough, farmers may not think it worthwhile to go to the trouble of saving and storing them.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

Persuading maize and gamagrass to hybridise and form such an apomictic plant was fairly easy because the anti-meiotic genes came in with the gamagrass.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

But once a firm sold a farmer the seeds of an apomictic crop, it would be difficult to stop him from saving seeds and growing them in future years.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering: No sex, please, we��re plants | The

So the news that, last month, a group of American and Russian researchers received a patent for an apomictic maize plant has probably caused a few flutters in seed-company boardrooms.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering

They picked on maize partly because it is so important and partly because it has an apomictic relative known as gamagrass, with which they suspected it could be hybridised to produce a cross that was itself apomictic.

ECONOMIST: Genetic engineering: No sex, please, we��re plants | The