Why is it advantageous for flowering plants to develop mechanisms to prevent self-pollination?

Step-by-step solution

Outbreeding Devices: Majority of flowering plants produce hermaphrodite flowers and pollen grains are likely to come in contact with the stigma of the same flower. Continued self-pollination result in inbreeding depression. Flowering plants have developed many devices to discourage self- pollination and to encourage cross-pollination. In some species, pollen release and stigma receptivity are not synchronised. Either the pollen is released before the stigma becomes receptive or stigma becomes receptive much before