What Is Selective Breeding

Selective Breeding

If you could pick out the traits that you prefer for what traits your baby had, what would they be? Would it have brown hair? Blue eyes? Well you can do this, but not with humans. Selective breeding is the process of breeding for a specific trait in plants or animals and usually it is used on domesticated organisms by professional breeders. It is also known as artificial selection. Therefore, what exactly is selective breeding? And how does it work? This is done by a professional breeder takes two animals/plants with the traits he wants and mates them. The offspring can either be a crossbreed, or hybrid. “This is usually done by crossing two members of the same species which possess dominant alleles for particular genes,

Plant breeding has been around for thousands of years. It was first used to domesticate wild plants. A breeder can take the pollen from a purebreed dominant trait and cross it with another plant of the same type and have another plant with that dominant trait. For example, A purebreed dominant red tomato (RR) mixed with a purebreed recessive yellow tomato (rr) would have a genotype of (Rr) in every plant. So the seeds would make red tomatoes. “The application of genetics to agriculture since World War II has resulted in substantial increases in the production of many crops.” (Britannica 1). Not only has it been around forever and a day, but also selective breeding plants can have a really good effect on our society. You are probably wondering how this can be used with

Yes in fact they can. It is like breeding plants, except you don't use pollen because last time I checked animals don’t produce pollen. In all seriousness though breeders use the animals sperm and egg. So if you wanted a white chicken (recessive tt) you would need two other recessive white chickens to breed. You would get a purebreed recessive white chicken. “In animals the methods of selective breeding can produce fitter and stronger animals that are of a higher yield of milk, meat or eggs for example some cows are bred to produce more meat .” (Breeding 1). “Animal breeding begins with breeding stock, a group of animals used for the purpose of planned breeding. When individuals are looking to breed animals, they look for certain valuable traits in purebred stock for a certain purpose, or may intend to use some type of cross breeding to produce a new type of stock with different, and, it is presumed, superior abilities in a given area of endeavour. For example, to breed chickens, a typical breeder intends to receive eggs, meat, and new, young birds for further reproduction.” (Breeding 1). There are many more examples of selective breeding