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How did selective breeding change wild plants into cultivated crops?
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Domestication
Domesticated yaks (Bos grunniens) carrying supplies to an Everest base camp in Sagarmatha National Park, Khumbu region, Nepal.
Selective breeding, or artificial selection, transforms wild plants into cultivated crops by exploiting the natural genetic variation present within wild populations. Humans act as agents of change by identifying and propagating individuals that possess traits deemed economically or aesthetically desirable, such as larger seeds, fruits, or tubers.123
The process relies on the following mechanisms:
- Exploiting Mutation Pools: Nature maintains a "store" of various forms hidden as recessive mutations within wild populations. Breeders isolate and propagate these specific genotypes to create new varieties.13
- Breaking Stabilized Systems: Unlike natural selection, which favors a phenotype adapted to diverse environmental conditions, artificial selection disrupts these stabilized systems to create gene combinations that might not survive in the wild but serve human needs.1
- Hybridization and Selection: Breeders often cross different varieties to combine desirable genes, then manage the resulting hybrid populations through pedigree or bulk-population methods to select for superior performance over successive generations.4
Through these interventions, humans have fundamentally altered the structure and appearance of plants, creating cultigens that are often dependent on human care for survival.12