In nature, cloning is common among plants and is used extensively in plant propagation. The offspring produced by cloning (and other methods of asexual reproduction) simply develop from cells produced by the parent. Because the offspring have genetic information identical to the parent, they develop very similar characteristics to their parent (and to one another) as they mature. This means that an agriculturalist who grows new plants from pieces of an older plant ensures that the new crop will be a fairly uniform one (Box 1: Propagating plants). In contrast, an individual formed by sexual reproduction develops from a cell produced by the union of two cells, usually from different parents. Offspring produced in this way are not genetically identical to each other or to their parents, unlike offspring formed by asexual methods of reproduction.