The present invention is directed to the seed-to-seed perpetuation of hybrid vigor and other traits through apomixis (asexual seed formation) in flowering plants (angiosperms). More particularly, to predictable methods for producing, from sexual or facultatively-apomictic plants, progeny plants that express an increased percentage of apomictic seed set or one or more elements of apomixis. This invention uses: plant cyto-embryology procedures to identify and select a plant or group of plants that possess appropriate genetic variability for initiation times and durations of megasporogenesis (female meiosis), embryo sac formation, egg and central cell formation and maturation, fertilization, embryony and endosperm formation; plant breeding procedures to produce numerous and divergent genetically-recombined early to late generation progeny such that embryo sac formation preempts megasporogenesis and embryony preempts fertilization; and plant cyto-embryology or progeny test procedures to select segregant plants that express an increased frequency of one or more elements of apomixis.
