polyembryo

English

Etymology

From poly- +‎ embryo.

Noun

polyembryo (plural polyembryos)

(botany) A single seed that contains multiple embryos.
- 1932, Taihoku Teikoku Daigaku. Ri-nogakubu, Memoirs, page 68:
  But sour and swee oranges have a number of characters in common -- small-panicled inflorescences, tight peel, whitish polyembryo, etc.
- 1977, M. Thompson Conkle, Knobcone Pine Self Compatibility and Isozyme Inheritance, page 61:
  A complicating feature of conifers, when estimating the number of lethals, is that polyembryos are common during seed development.
- 2013, Giovanni Dugo, Ivana Bonaccorsi, Citrus bergamia: Bergamot and its Derivatives, →ISBN, page 26:
  This method is effective because unlike other fructiferous plants, citrus possesses the polyembryo property, thus obtaining from a single seed more than one plant with identical properties to the parent plant.
(biology) One of a set of genetically identical embryos that develop from a single fertilized egg.
- 1964, Kazimierz Sembrat, Zoologica Poloniae: Archivum Societatis Zoologorum Poloniae, page 264:
  Mitochondria, like the phospholipids, have been investigated when the polyembryo of Ageniaspis had the form of a tube (string).
- 2008, John Avise, Clonality, →ISBN:
  The phenomenon, nevertheless, is probably greatly underreported, because to my knowledge no one has searched methodically—using suitable nuclear genetic markers—for vertebrate polyembryos in nature.
- 2010, Rehana Khan, A Textbook of Biotechnology Volume-I Genetics and Molecular Biology, →ISBN:
  Furthermore, in certain species having polyembryos development (e.g., armadillo), all the embryos that have develope from a single fertilized egg are of the same sex.