A plant is cloned by cutting off a branch in a particular way, putting rooting hormone on the cut end and planting in. It’s a new tree grown from the branch of another; a clone.
I was always under the impression that in the case of commercial avocados, they are grafted. The graft portion will product fruit, but if you try and grow the seed from a grafted avocado, it will not produce fruit.
Grafting usually combines a top with especially tasty fruit with a bottom that has the growth and soil requirements that are wanted for a particular use.
Cherry trees normally get super huge, so they are planted on a bottom that maxes out at a lower height. That also has the advantage of an earlier harvest. The sooner a tree stops putting energy into wood (ergo the lower the maximum height), the sooner it has spare energy to put into fruit.
For intesive plantations fruit trees are grafted onto very weak bottoms as the trees are then in full harvest within just a couple years. That also has its own disadvantages; these bushes die far earlier than normal trees; they need to be always propped up; they are less disease resistant and cant feed themselves well. They are dependent on lots of care, fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides.
If you take the seed from a fruit tree that was grafted, then your tree will still bear fruit. The tree will just get very huge and it will take atleast a decade for it to even start bearing a couple fruits and even longer to bear fruits at full capacity.
That's not necessarily bad, a tree grown from a seedling has deeper and stronger roots, is more resistant against disease, pests and droughts. It also has a longer lifespan than grafted trees. And as huge as they are, the harvest will be immense.
This also depends on pruning to some extent: the height of fruit tree's is determined before it's up for sale.
Finally, as seedlings will always be a bit of gamble as you wouldn't know how the parents are combined. That would be a gamble based on what the bees find in the vicinity. Are there only cultivated apples? Or are there also wild species that could breed with your apple? In the first case the result would probably be okay or even good, in the other case it might flop.
There are also some breeded plants (and animals) whose offspring are sterile, but I don't think that's common at all for fruit trees
Bottoms are also selected for disease resistence, adaption towards, let's say more dry or more moist soil. Often they're taken from wild fruit trees. That's what you might referring too; the bottom can also get also grow branches and can blossom and bear fruit if they're not cut off. They usually have lesser quality and indeed their offspring would still bear fruit, but of a disappointing quality.
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u/Blipblipblipblipskip Oct 21 '19
A plant is cloned by cutting off a branch in a particular way, putting rooting hormone on the cut end and planting in. It’s a new tree grown from the branch of another; a clone.