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Inbotany, asport orbud sport, traditionally calledlusus,[2] is a part of a plant that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color,flowers, fruit, orbranch structure. The cause is generally thought to be chancegenetic mutations[3] in a single cell. Sports may also arise from stable changes in gene expression due toepigenetic modifications, includinghistone modification,DNA methylation,chromatin remodeling andRNA silencing.[4] If the clonal descendants of a modified cell eventually form a meristem that gives rise to new plant parts, those may be of a new phenotype. Often only part of the meristem cells are affected, resulting ingenetic chimerism in such sports.
Sports with desirable characteristics may be grown into new plants byvegetative reproduction and are often propagated as newcultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology.[5] Such selections are often prone to "reversion", meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form. An example of a bud sport is thenectarine, at least some of which developed as a bud sport frompeaches.[6] Other common fruits resulting from a sport mutation are thered Anjou pear, theRuby Red grapefruit, and thevariegated pink lemon, which is a sport of the"Eureka" lemon.[7]
The use of spontaneous mutations in plant breeding may avoid certain challenges associated with breeding by sexual recombination, like heterozygosity and sexual incompatibilities. Since usually only (very) few alleles are affected, most of the traits of the original cultivar are retained.[8]
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