BIOL 1050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Seed Dormancy, Heterosis, Inbreeding Depression
28 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Process by which plants or animals are genetically modified over time by humans for traits that we want: often have difficulty surviving in the wild. Common traits include: large fruit/seed, loss of seed dormancy, loss of seed shattering, uniform maturation, reduction in bitter/undesirable flavours ex. Wild almonds are poisonous, domestic aren"t: loss of seeds ex. Inter-mating, cross-over, new introductions: selection for adaption and performance, propagation of the selected group. If nature does it, over a longer term, we term it evolution. If we do it, we term it plant/animal breeding. Population improvement: keep seed from 5-15% of the desired plants, continue this process for several generations. Improved open-pollinated varieties: that was how corn was bred until the 1920s, then, the east lemming x bloody butcher cross appeared, and corn changed forever. Tendency of a cross bred individual to show qualities superior to both of the parents.
