artificial selection Breeding of plants, animals, or other organisms in which the parents are individually selected in order to perpetuate certain desired traits and eliminate others from the captive population. By this means, most of our domestic crops, livestock, and pets have arisen. Desired traits produced by artificial selection include disease-resistant plants and high milk production in cows. Artificial selection can be accelerated by techniques such as plant tissue culture and the artificial insemination of livestock. When an organism in nature undergoes an advantageous change that is passed to successive generations, this is called natural selection. See also clone; genetic engineering

artificial selection The modification of species by selective breeding. Animals or plants with desirable characteristics are interbred with the aim of altering the genotype and producing a new strain of the organism for a specific purpose. For example, sheep are bred by means of artificial selection in order to improve wool quality. Traditional breeding techniques have been supplemented, and in many cases supplanted, by more recent methods of genetic engineering, genetic testing, and embryo manipulation. Sequencing the genomes of commercially important animal and plant species has enabled the inheritance of desired genes to be monitored directly by molecular methods, instead of by phenotypic analysis. These methods have simultaneously opened up new approaches to selection and enabled it to become more refined and focused.

artificial selection Selection by humans of individual plants or animals from which to breed the next generation, because these individuals possess the most marked development of the required attributes. Typically the process is repeated in successive generations until those attributes are fixed in the descendent offspring. Such artificial selection can result in dramatic changes, like those that took place in the domestication of plants from their wild forebears.

artificial selection Selection by humans of individual plants from which to breed the next generation, because these possess the most marked development of the required attributes. Typically the process is repeated in successive generations until those attributes are fixed in the descendant offspring. Such artificial selection can result in dramatic changes, like those that took place in the domestication of plants from their wild forebears.

artificial selection Selection by humans of individual plants or animals from which to breed the next generation, because these individuals exhibit the most marked development of the required attributes. Typically, the process is repeated in successive generations until those attributes are fixed in the descendent offspring.