Selective Breeding Definition

Humans were selective breeding plants and animals thousands of years before Darwin hypothesised evolution by natural selection and Mendel established the laws of heredity. The effectiveness of human selective breeding was part of Darwin’s case for natural selection in evolution, and it had supplied Mendel with a diversity of garden peas for his own inheritance research.

Humans could observe how children of plants and animals resembled their parents long before they understood how heredity worked, and they used their observations to actively modify the phenotypics of diverse plants and animals through selective breeding.

What is Selective Breeding?

In today’s world, animal and plant breeders are still interested in creating creatures with desirable phenotypic traits for humans, such as higher agricultural yields, increased milk production, bigger fruits, disease resistance, rapid development, and many other phenotypic qualities.

Selective breeding involves crossing two individuals of the same species who have physical or behavioural characteristics in common, such as friendliness in dogs, speed in horses, or big ears in corn. Individuals with one set of desired features, like as big seeds, may also be crossed with individuals who develop quickly.

If dominant genes are linked to these features, children with both traits may arise in the first generation of hybrids. Breeders keep note of which traits each organism possesses, so that when mating season returns, they may selectively breed the organisms to generate more desirable attributes in their offspring, and eventually produce pure-breeding stocks with the desired set of characteristics.

In many situations, however, the most ideal combinations are found in heterozygous children, which means that each allele will have one dominant and one recessive gene. Professional breeders have a genuine breeding cross (AAbb) that gives a gene bank with these traits that may be crossed with aaBB to generate heterozygous offspring reliably.

Artificial selection, also known as selective breeding, is a method of selecting parents that has allowed our species to improve the efficiency of the animals and plants it breeds, such as improving milk output in cows by continually mating selected animals with one another to generate a hybrid.

Inbreeding Depression

While it is advantageous for humans to generate these desired characteristics, continued inbreeding and selection of certain genes risks eradicating some of the other genes from the gene pool entirely, which is irreversible. Because the species’ total variety is diminished, this is known as inbreeding depression. It is better for organisms to keep their genetic variety in the long run.

Genetic diversity indicates that a species’ gene pool is prepared for a variety of circumstances, such as a food scarcity or a disease pandemic. Some genes in some creatures may provide immunity to different illnesses or the ability to go without nourishment for extended periods of time.

Some of these genes may have been phased out owing to the breeder’s desire for other desirable genes to be present in their crop if continual inbreeding has happened in a species. Long-term genetic variety is diminished because many species end up with similar genomes as a result of continual breeding.

This procedure would be random in normal conditions, resulting in more varied offspring. Breeders must keep their breeding stock’s gene pool as diverse as possible while enhancing human-beneficial characteristics in order to ensure the long-term well-being of the species they are breeding and their own livelihood.

With this in mind, humans have created gene banks to preserve genetic information in the event of extinction, as well as to foster species with dangerously low populations. Ironically, the human intervention that has disturbed so many species may now be used to implant genes into creatures, allowing them to be prepared for hypothetical eventualities like epidemics or climate change. Genetic engineering would allow organisms to adapt to their surroundings without the trial and error that comes with natural selection over time.