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Selective breeding of both plants and animals has been practiced since prehistory; key species such as wheat, rice, and dogs have been significantly different from their wild ancestors for millennia, and maize, which required especially large changes from teosinte, its wild form, was selectively bred in Mesoamerica.
The list includes individual plant species identified by their common names as well as larger formal and informal botanical categories which include at least some domesticated individuals. Plants in this list are grouped by the original or primary purpose for which they were domesticated, and subsequently by botanical or culinary categories.
In order to be considered fully domesticated, most species have undergone significant genetic, behavioural and morphological changes from their wild ancestors, while others have changed very little from their wild ancestors despite hundreds or thousands of years of potential selective breeding. A number of factors determine how quickly any ...
The plants listed may be ornamental, medicinal, and/or edible. Several of them bear edible fruit. Plants are selectively bred for phenotypic traits (such as flower colour) and other hereditary traits. When developing a new variety, a plant breeder might value such characteristics as appearance, disease resistance, and hardiness.
Plant breeding is the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. [1] It is used to improve the quality of plant products for use by humans and animals. [2] The goals of plant breeding are to produce crop varieties that boast unique and superior traits for a variety of applications.
Selective breeding has been responsible for large increases in productivity. For example, in 2007, a typical broiler chicken at eight weeks old was 4.8 times as heavy as a bird of similar age in 1957, [36] while in the thirty years to 2007, the average milk yield of a dairy cow in the United States nearly doubled. [36]
Selective breeding of plants and animals has led to varieties that differ dramatically from their original wild-type ancestors. Examples are the cabbage varieties, maize, or the large number of different dog breeds. The power of human breeding to create varieties with extreme differences from a single species was already recognized by Charles ...
The offspring produced as a result of breeding animals of one breed with other animals of another breed are known as crossbreeds or mixed breeds. Crosses between animal or plant variants above the level of breed/cultivar (i.e. between species, subspecies, botanical variety, even different genera) are referred to as hybrids. [6]