selective breeding

Selective breeding in plants involves the intentional breeding of plants with desirable traits to produce offspring with enhanced characteristics.

Plants are selectively bred for various characteristics including:

By selectively breeding plants with desired characteristics over successive generations, breeders can create new variant crops that address specific agricultural challenges and meet consumer demands. This enhances food security and improves agricultural sustainability.

Selective breeding can lead to inbreeding, which occurs when closely related individuals are bred together to perpetuate desired traits. Inbreeding reduces the genetic diversity within a population, resulting in an increased risk of inheriting harmful genetic defects. Additionally, the reduced genetic variation makes organisms more susceptible to new diseases, as there are fewer chances of possessing resistance alleles within the population.

Inbreeding in plants leads to a reduction in genetic diversity within populations by limiting the number of alleles, or different versions of genes, present in the population. When closely related individuals are repeatedly bred together the genetic variation decreases, resulting in a higher frequency of homozygous genotypes and a loss of heterozygosity. This increases the risk of genetic defects and susceptibility to diseases.

Selective breeding, also known as artificial selection, involves the intentional mating of animals with desirable traits to produce offspring that inherit those characteristics. Through careful selection and breeding of animals over successive generations, breeders aim to develop new breeds or strains that reliably exhibit the desired characteristics.

By selecting and breeding animals that exhibit specific characteristics, breeders can amplify the desired traits within a population over multiple generations and create distinct breeds with uniform traits.

Animals are selectively bred for various characteristics, including:

Maintaining genetic diversity in selectively bred animal populations is crucial for :

True. Whilst natural selection is a process which takes many generations, in selective breeding, the process is much faster as individuals with the desired characteristics are chosen to breed at the start of the process.