Polyploidy is pervasive in plants and some estimates suggest that 30-80% of living plant species are polyploid, and many lineages show evidence of ancient polyploidy (paleopolyploidy) in their genomes.
Huge explosions in angiosperm species diversity appear to have coincided with the timing of ancient genome duplication shared by many species.
Polyploid plants can arise spontaneously in nature by several mechanisms, including meiotic or mitotic failures, and fusion of unreduced (2n) gametes. Both autopolyploids (e.g., potato) and allopolyploids (e.g., canola, wheat, cotton) can be found among both wild and domesticated plant species.
The induction of polyploidy is a common technique to overcome the sterility of a hybrid species during plant breeding.
For example, triticale is the hybrid of wheat (Triticum turgidum) and rye (Secale cereale). After polyploidization, the hybrid becomes fertile and can thus be further propagated to become triticale.