polyembryo

English

Etymology

poly- +‎ embryo

Noun

polyembryo (plural polyembryos)

1. (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.

2. (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.