IVE - Selective Breeding Flashcards
(7 cards)
What is selective breeding?
The breeding of two parents that have desirable traits, in the hopes that they produce offspring with the same traits, or even better.
EG tomato crops
Two tomato plants are selected that produce bigger fruit.
They are bred to make more tomato plants, some of which will also have large, or even larger fruit.
This is done through multiple generations until all of the plants are producing large fruit (best of 2nd generation, best of 3rd generation etc).
What is a gene pool?
the collection of all alleles in a population
Selective breeding reduces the…
gene pool of the population.
Only certain alleles are selected which code for the desired traits.
Overtime, the other alleles are not passed on and disappear.
Selective breeding is basically incest/ inbreeding sometimes so…
the animals can have defects or be especially prone to disease, since their gene pool is so small.
A small gene pool also means that there is less
variation in the population.
Why can selective breeding mean that a farmer loses all their crops suddenly?
Since the gene pool is so small, and there is hardly any variation in the population, if a crop is infected with a disease, chances are all of the plants will be and die.
