Effect of Hybridization on Somatic Mutations and Genomic Rearrangements in Plants

Hybridization has been routinely practiced in agriculture to enhance the crop yield. Principally, it can cause hybrid vigor where hybrid plants display increased size, biomass, fertility, and resistance to diseases, when compared to their parents. During hybridization, hybrid offspring receive a genomic shock due to mixing of distant parental genomes, which triggers a myriad of genomic rearrangements, e.g., transpositions, genome size changes, chromosomal rearrangements, and other effects on the chromatin. Recently, it has been reported that, besides genomic rearrangements, hybridization can also alter the somatic mutation rates in plants. In this review, we provide in-depth insights about hybridization triggered genomic rearrangements and somatic mutations in plants.