Selective Breeding Flashcards
What is selective breeding?
the breeding of only those individuals with desirable features to create better offspring
AKA artificial selection
Describe the process of selective breeding in plants
- select crops with desired characteristics
- breed them together to make the next generation
- repeat again with best crops to get a better generation each time
Why do farmers use selective breeding?
to obtain increased yields, to be resistant to certain diseases and pests, to be harder and survive harsher climates, to have better nutrients for human consumption
What are the drawbacks of selective breeding?
reduces gene pool of population, inbreeding can occur, less variation within the population
Why is selective breeding used in animals?
to produce more meat, milk, eggs, fur, offspring, increased resistant to diseases or parasites
What is artificial insemination (AI)?
form of selective breeding in animals
semen from the male animals with desirable characteristics are kept and diluted, frozen and stores
farmers can buy quantity of this semen and inseminate them into their cows, by transferring it into the uterus of female cows by syringe.
allowing one animals semen to fertilise many cows
What is a gene pool?
collection of all the different types of alleles in a population
What is inbreeding?
when individuals who are related or have similar genes are bred together, it can cause genetic mutation and the offspring will be prone to disease or inherited defects due to the small gene pool.
