Skip to content
Home

Artificial selection: intentional breeding of plants and animals

Artificial selection (selective breeding) is the deliberate choice of parents to produce offspring with desired traits. This article explains methods, history, examples, benefits, risks and how it differs from natural selection.

Author: Created: Updated:

Overview

Artificial selection, often called selective breeding, is the deliberate pairing of plants or animals by humans to encourage particular heritable traits in future generations. It is one of the oldest forms of modifying living organisms and underlies the development of most domesticated crops and livestock. Unlike laboratory genetic engineering that manipulates DNA directly, artificial selection works by choosing which individuals reproduce so that favorable variants become more common over time.

Image gallery

5 Images
Big and little dog 1
simple.wikipedia.org · CC BY-SA 3.0

Characteristics and common practices

Practices in artificial selection vary with goals and species but share core elements: identifying desirable traits, selecting parents that express those traits, and managing matings over multiple generations. Typical approaches include:

  • Linebreeding and inbreeding: mating closely related individuals to fix traits rapidly but at risk of concentrating harmful genes and reducing fertility (inbreeding depression).
  • Outcrossing and backcrossing: introducing less-related or wild-type individuals to restore vigor or reintroduce variation, often yielding hybrid vigour.
  • Artificial insemination and controlled pollination: technical methods used to manage parentage and increase the efficiency of selection.

History and development

Humans have altered plants and animals by selective breeding for thousands of years. Early farmers unconsciously favored seeds and animals with useful features; over generations this produced domesticated forms very different from their wild ancestors. By the 19th century, breeders and naturalists recognized artificial selection as a powerful process that could rapidly change organisms. Charles Darwin used it as a key analogy in explaining natural selection, showing how consistent selection for certain traits can lead to major changes in form and behavior.

Uses and modern examples

Artificial selection remains central to agriculture, animal husbandry and horticulture. Examples include:

  • Dog breeds developed for size, coat, behavior or working ability.
  • Crop varieties selected for yield, taste, drought tolerance or harvestability, such as many staple grains and vegetables.
  • Livestock lines chosen for milk production, meat quality or disease resistance.
These outcomes can be achieved by long-term selection or by focused programs that combine traditional breeding with modern genetic tools to track desirable genes.

Benefits, limitations and distinctions from natural selection

Benefits of artificial selection include reliable enhancement of useful traits and improved productivity for human needs. Limitations include loss of genetic diversity, unintended health problems in highly selected breeds, and vulnerability to changing environments or pathogens. Artificial selection is goal-directed and guided by human preferences, whereas natural selection results from environmental pressures that favor traits improving survival or reproduction without foresight. Both processes change allele frequencies over time, but their drivers and typical outcomes differ.

Notable facts and considerations

Artificial selection can be intentional or inadvertent; unintentional selection occurred in early domestication when humans unconsciously favored plants and animals better suited to cultivation or captivity. Breeders today balance trait improvement with genetic health by monitoring inbreeding coefficients and using outcrosses when needed. Ethical, ecological and economic considerations influence modern breeding programs, and breeders increasingly combine selective breeding with molecular genetics to meet complex goals.

Further reading

Questions and answers

Q: What is artificial selection?

A: Artificial selection is the intentional breeding of plants or animals, which is also known as selective breeding. It is an ancient method of genetic engineering.

Q: How does selective breeding work?

A: Selective breeding involves choosing animals with desirable traits to breed and passing those traits on to the next generation. Inbreeding is a particular type of selective breeding that produces a population that is genetically almost identical.

Q: What happens when inbred populations are taken outside the laboratory?

A: When inbred populations are taken outside the laboratory, they lose fertility and must be outcrossed or backcrossed to wild-type individuals or less inbred stock in order to maintain their viability. This improvement when outcrossing occurs is called hybrid vigour.

Q: How did Charles Darwin use artificial selection?

A: Charles Darwin used artificial selection as an example to introduce his idea of natural selection. He used it as a contrast between artificial and natural processes for selecting organisms with certain traits for better survival and reproduction.

Q: Is artificial selection always intentional?

A: No, sometimes it can be unintentional; it's thought that early humans domesticated crops without intentionally doing so.

Q: What happens during natural selection?

A: During natural selection, some variations help organisms have better survival and reproduction, resulting in differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits within a population which maintains or enhances its fitness within its natural habitat.

Related articles

Author

AlegsaOnline.com Artificial selection: intentional breeding of plants and animals

URL: https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/6355

Share

Sources