What are hexaploid plants?

Question

What are hexaploid plants?

Answer 1

Normally all plants have two sets of chromosomes and are thus , Diploid .

Hexaploid plants have SIX sets of chromosomes .

Wheat is the most famous example -

Read more on the links below -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_of...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploidy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triticale

Answer 2

A hexaploid plant has six complete sets of chromosomes in the cell nucleus (hexa = six).  Bread wheat is an example of a hexaploid species, and in this case it has two sets each of three different genomes.  While the majority of plant species are diploid (2 sets of chromosomes), polyploidy is common in plants, and can be a mechanism to drive speciation.  A good example is Nicotiana, the genus of tobacco, where ~ one-third of all species are ancient polyploids that resulted from hybridization events between distantly related species followed by a doubling of the chromosomes to restore fertility.