Selective breeding
Selective breeding is the deliberate mating of organisms with desired heritable traits to make those traits more common in later generations.
Artificial selection: Evolutionary change caused by humans choosing which organisms reproduce. Selective breeding is the practical, repeated use of artificial selection.
Plant breeding: The development of plant varieties with useful traits through selection, crossing, or other methods. It applies selective breeding to traits such as yield, taste, and disease resistance.
Natural selection: Evolutionary change caused by differences in survival and reproduction among organisms. Unlike selective breeding, it does not require humans to choose parents.
Inbreeding depression: Reduced fitness caused by increased expression of harmful recessive alleles or loss of genetic diversity. Repeated mating within narrow breeding lines can reduce health and reproductive success.
Domestication of plants: The gradual transformation of wild plants into crops through human cultivation and selection. Early cultivation and repeated seed choice began the selective shaping of crops.
Heritability: The proportion of variation in a trait within a population associated with genetic differences. A selected trait changes reliably only when genetic differences contribute to its variation.
Animal breeding: The planned mating of animals to improve inherited traits in populations. It targets traits such as milk production, growth, fertility, and behavior.
Genetic engineering: The direct alteration of an organism’s genetic material using laboratory techniques. It changes genetic material directly rather than relying on chosen matings.
Genetic bottleneck: A sharp reduction in population size that leaves a smaller, less diverse gene pool. Intense selection or use of few breeding parents can narrow inherited diversity.
Domestication of animals: The long-term adaptation of animal populations to human management and environments. Choosing animals to reproduce accompanied the emergence of domesticated livestock.