What is Abscission? Process of Abscission
Abscission refers to the shedding of various elements of an organism. The elements of an organism such as a leaf, fruit, flower, or seed by a plant. Abscission is the deliberate shedding of a bodily component, such as a claw, husk, or autotomy of a tail.
Function: It is the liberation of a fungus spore in mycology. Abscission is the process of division of two daughter cells at the end of the cytokinesis phase in cell biology. A plant abscises a component either to get rid of a member that is no longer needed, such as a leaf in the fall or a flower after pollination or to reproduce.
Most seasonal plants quite their leaves before winter, however, evergreen plants fall their leaves throughout the year. Fruit drop is another type of abscission, in which a plant fall fruit. While it is still immature to save nutrients for bringing the surviving fruit to completion.
A plant may abscise a damaged leaf to maintain water or photosynthetic performance, based on the ‘costs’ to the plant overall. The color of the abscission layer is dark green.
can also occur as a plant defense mechanism in premature leaves. Premature leaf abscission observes in response to gall insect infection.
Plants prove to dramatically reduce the pest population by abscising leaves. Abscising leaves create a host to aphid galls, with 98 percent of aphids in abscised galls dying.
The abscission is particular, and as the number of galls rises, the likelihood of falling leaves increases. A leaf with 3 or more galls was 4 times more likely to abscise than one with only one. However, 20 times more drops than one with none.
Process of Abscission
Abscission happens in three stages: 1 = resorption, 2= development of a protective layer, and 3= detachment. Based on the species, steps 2 and 3 may happen in any order.
