Selective Breeding

?
  • Created by: India.02
  • Created on: 31-05-19 17:39

Selective Breeding is Simple

- Whem humans artifically select the plants or animals that are going to breed so that the genes for particular characteristics remain in the population - often features that are attractive or useful (more meat/milk, disease resistance, big flowers on plants)

- Select which organisms have the desired characteristic - breed them with each other - select best offspring and breed them together - continue the process over several generations until the desired trait gets stronger and all offspring have the characteristic

- In agriculture, selective breeding can be used to improve yield

- Selective breeding is how we ended up with edible crops from wild plants and domesticated animals like cows and dogs

1 of 2

Reduction In The Gene Pool

- Selective breeding reduces the gene pool - the number of different alleles in a population

- Breeding from the best animals or plants, which are all closely related, means you are inbreeding

- This can cause health problems because there is a higher risk of organisms inheriting harmful genetic defects when the gene pool is limited 

- There can be a serious problem if a new disease appears because there isn't much variation in the population, so they are all closely related to each other - if one can be killed by the disease, the others are likely to suffer as well

- Selective breeding - reduction in number of different alleles - less chance of any resistant alleles beign present in the population

2 of 2

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Biology resources:

See all Biology resources »See all Variety of life and classification resources »