Selective Breeding Flashcards

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Note: We may include questions that have multiple correct answers. It's useful to remember specific examples to understand these concepts better.

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What is selective breeding?

Selective breeding is when humans choose which plants or animals to breed so that their offspring have useful features.

What are the basic steps in selective breeding?

Choose parents with the desired feature, breed them together, select the best offspring, then repeat this for many generations.

Give one example of a useful characteristic in crops that can be improved by selective breeding.

Farmers can breed crop plants that give a higher yield, such as wheat plants that produce more grain.

Give one example of a useful characteristic in farm animals that can be improved by selective breeding.

Farmers can breed cows that produce more milk or chickens that grow larger for meat.

How can selective breeding help food security?

It can increase food yield and improve quality, so more people can be fed from the same area of land.

Why does selective breeding reduce genetic variation in a population?

Only a few individuals with desired features are bred, so many different versions of genes are lost from the group.

How can reduced genetic variation make a selectively bred population less healthy?

If all individuals are very similar, a disease or change in the environment can harm many of them at once.

What is inbreeding in selective breeding programmes?

Inbreeding is when closely related individuals are bred together many times, which can increase the chance of harmful genetic problems.

How is selective breeding different from natural selection?

In selective breeding, humans choose which organisms breed, but in natural selection the environment decides which are most likely to survive and reproduce.

Why can selective breeding take many years?

The chosen feature must be passed on over many generations, and each generation takes time to grow to adulthood and breed.

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