Plants are foolish or wise to lose and profit others? A HR message

When passion and commitment for success becomes the guiding principle of life, limitations and adversities automatically go null and void is the management message corporate has to learn from some plants.

The probable evolution of flowering plants from non flowering plants (?) itself is only to facilitate the segregation and mixing of the genetic materials during pollination and seed formation. Thereby, an improved variety of plants can be produced. This is all about evolution of flowering plants.

Procreation through pollination is advantageous to all flowering plants than by other means like vegetative reproduction.

But unfortunately, many flowering plants do suffer from problems like parthenocarpy and stenospermocarpy. The parthenocarpy is nothing but the formation of fruits without fertilization. On the other hand, the stenospermocarpy is a state where fruits are formed without seeds.

According to botany, many reasons can be cited for the above situation in many flowering plants. The parthenocarpy and stenospermocarpy, both can eliminate plant population in no time from the biome. But nature has never allowed such event to occur. Nature has given an alternative method of vegetative propagation to some plants that frequently suffer from the above problem.

Most of the flowering plants produce large number of flowers for the purpose of propagation. In a sense they are ‘super performers’ as far as their propagation instinct is concerned. But remember, the super performers do suffer the worst in nature.

Instead of worrying or blaming the fate or destiny, the plants do switch to other mode of reproduction.

Another important insight one must grab from the plants affected either by parthenocarpy or stenospermocarpy is that however at the end they do produce fruits. The big question is why? Although such fruits (fruits without fertilized seeds or fruits without seeds) will not meet or fulfill the ultimate purpose of the plants, it does meet the very existence of the pollinators by fulfilling their food needs. The plants even when fail in their very purpose of procreation due to some reason, they do not want to fail the existence of the pollinators.

If the life and existence of the pollinators are in jeopardy, plants may suffer the worst tragedy in the next breeding season and thereby the saga of the same disaster would continue in different form. Nature has taught the plants not to allow the problem of parthenocarpy or stenospermocarpy to extend beyond.

The problem has to be limited, diluted, confined and fixed and should not be allowed to spread its kingdom of dismay. A great management message one need to thread from the above events in nature.

One of the reasons for the problem of parthenocarpy and stenospermocarpy is pollination failure. Pollination failure is mainly due to the lack of effective pollinators. In order to enhance successful pollination events at least during the next breeding season, the plants have to keep the pollinators in good humor. That is why many plants produce fruits without fertilized seeds or without seeds in nature. Such fruiting is quite expensive to plants.

A problem should never be allowed to multiply into another problem and instead problems should breed only solution is the management essence we must learn from the above. On the basis of this cardinal management essence only the entire creation has been made.

Corporate must learn that nature has lot of offer to our ‘organic’ growth if not the ‘commercial’ growth. It is up to the sensitive HR to revolutionize the culture and productivity of the corporate.

Dr S Ranganathan