How is selective breeding used today

For thousands of years, farmers have been adjusting the traits of crops and livestock through a process called selective breeding.

What sort of traits might farmers be looking for? Using selective breeding, farmers have converted wild plants and animals into the crops and livestock we use today.

In the past, farmers had to rely on outward appearances for selective breeding. Nowadays, farmers use much more efficient, scientific breeding techniques. Just like humans, plants and animals inherit traits from their parents.

These traits are encoded in their DNA : a molecule found inside almost every living cell. The genome is split into regions called genes, and these genes each contain a sequence of DNA. In other words, DNA acts like a set of instructions that enable cells to assemble the building blocks of all living things!

We inherit half of our genes from each parent. However, the specific combination of genes we inherit is almost completely random. This means that DNA is mixed up with every generation. Artificial selection has long been used in agriculture to produce animals and crops with desirable traits. The meats sold today are the result of the selective breeding of chickens, cattle, sheep, and pigs. Many fruits and vegetables have been improved or even created through artificial selection.

For example, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage were all derived from the wild mustard plant through selective breeding. Artificial selection appeals to humans since it is faster than natural selection and allows humans to mold organisms to their needs. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.

If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. In the mids, Charles Darwin famously described variation in the anatomy of finches from the Galapagos Islands. Alfred Russel Wallace noted the similarities and differences between nearby species and those separated by natural boundaries in the Amazon and Indonesia.

Independently they came to the same conclusion: over generations, natural selection of inherited traits could give rise to new species. For example, they may provide more or better quality food to feed people. Example of selective breeding.

The Aberdeen Angus bull is bred for beef. The Friesian cow is a dairy breed. The traditional Highland cow. Selective breeding takes place over many generations. These are the main steps involved:.