Adventitious definition
Adventitious means “not expected or planned” (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary) but this term seems not fully appropriate since AR formation is a normal developmental event in plants. It occurs naturally (in monocotyledonous after the primary root has died off), or is induced by stresses (wounding and flooding) (De Klerk et al., 1999a). AR formation is highly important in horticultural practice when plants are propagated vegetatively as the capacity of plants to establish themselves successfully depends for the larger part on the ability to form new roots. Vegetative propagation is widely used in horticulture and forestry for multiplication of elite plants obtained in breeding programs or selected from natural populations (Hartmann et al., 2011). AR formation is easy (monocotyledons), difficult or impossible (many woody crops) to achieve. If shoots are incapable of producing their own roots, grafting is being used as an ‘escape’ which is laborious and may suffer from problems like (postponed) incompatibility. Generally, the inability to form AR can have vast, negative economic consequences (estimated loss for the Netherlands is 25% in nursery crops and 5% in ornamental crops) (De Klerk et al., 1999b). The total horticultural production in the Netherlands reached up to €8.6 billion in 2011 (Factsheet: Horticulture-Holland Alumni1). Bearing this in mind and considering that over 70% of the propagation systems used in horticultural industry depends on successful rooting of cuttings (Davies Jr et al., 1994), a rough estimation for the economic loss would be €
Examples of Adventitious in a sentence
European Commission, DG AGRI, 2007 ▇▇▇▇://▇▇.▇▇▇▇▇▇.▇▇/agriculture/envir/gmo/economic_impactGMOs_en.pdf - Adventitious traces of genetically modified seeds in conventional seed lots: current situation in Member States.
Adventitious rooting of eight conifers into a volcanic tephra deposit.