Selective breeding Flashcards
What is selective breeding ?
When humans artificially select plants and animals that are going to breed so that the genes for particular characteristics remain in the population .
Organisms are selectively bred to develop features that are useful or attractive.
Process involved in selective breeding
1) from your existing stock, select the ones with the characteristics you’re after
2) breed them with each other
3) select the best of the offspring and breed them together
4) continue this over several generations, so, desirable trait will get stronger and stronger and all offspring will eventually have the characteristic
5) has been done for thousands of years, that’s how we ended up with domesticated animals or edible crops from wild plants
What is the main problem with selective breeding ??
reduces the gene pool - the number of different alleles in a population. This is because farmers inbreed from the “best” animals and plants.
-> health problems as there is more of a chance of the organism inheriting harmful genetic defects when the gene pool is limited . Some dog breeds are more susceptible to certain defects due to inbreeding
new disease appears -> not much variation in population as all stock are closely related. One killed = rest likely to be killed.
less chance of resistive alleles being present in population
