Question

A team of scientists is studying several plant species that they think could become new farm crops. The scientists want to apply selective breeding to develop one of the species into useful crop plants. Which property of a plant species would be MOST USEFUL for meeting the scientists’ goal?

Answer 1

Answer: the gene variants that are passed from one generation to the next generation. Which might be the ability to produce good yeild, fatter crop size or taller crops etc.

Step-by-step explanation:

Selective breeding involves choosing parents with particular or unique characteristics to breed together and produce offspring with much more desirable characteristics. It aims at adapting organism’s characteristics in a way that is desirable to the humans that breed them.

Selective breeding often involves breeding individuals that are closely related, which is known as inbreeding.

For example, if we breed parents that are y'all together and exclude the shorter parents, the offspring should inherit “tall” gene variants that make them tall.

Some of the offsprings produced may even be taller than both of their parents, because they may inherit a combination of different “tall” gene variants from each parent which makes the offspring taller. With repeated selective breeding over multiple generations this population will get taller and taller as time goes on.

Answer 2

The high yielding property of a plant species would be most useful for meeting the scientists’ goal.

Step-by-step explanation:

In selective breeding, we develop a new variety by crossing a wild specie with the domestic growing variety in order to achieve the characteristic which is present only in wild specie. So with the help of selective breeding, this characteristics is transferred to the offspring. The main goal of scientist is to produce such variety which produces maximum yield and also good quality seeds.