Artificial selection

• Artificial selection is also called selective breeding.
• Artificial selection takes place over many generations.
• The main steps involved in selective breeding are:

  1. Decide which characteristics are important enough to select
  2. Choose parents that show the best of the chosen characteristics
  3. Choose the best offspring from the parents for the next generation
  4. Repeat the process continuously
• What are the problems with artificial selection?

  • Future generations will all share similar genes. This means diseases could affect all the organisms and there is an increased risk of genetic disease caused by recessive alleles
  • Inbreeding leads to the loss of alleles from the gene pool, making it difficult to produce new varieties in the future