Selective Breeding

• Selective breeding

  Taking the best plants or animals in a population and breeding them together to get even better offspring
• How selective breeding works

  1. Select the best individuals from the existing stock

  2. Breed the selected individuals together

  3. Repeat the process, always selecting the best from each generation
• Drawbacks of selective breeding

  • Reduces the gene pool of the population
  • Can lead to inbreeding and inherited defects
  • Reduces variation, making the population vulnerable to new pathogens
• Selective breeding selects for certain alleles that code for the desired traits, reducing the gene pool
• Breeding the best individuals, who are often closely related, can lead to inbreeding
• A small gene pool means less variation, so a new pathogen could affect the entire population