Wiktionary
n. The practice of breeding the best specimens of a given organism to encourage certain features.
Wikipedia
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together. Domesticated animals are known as breeds, normally bred by a professional breeder, while domesticated plants are known as varieties, cultigens, or cultivars. Two purebred animals of different breeds produce a crossbreed, and crossbred plants are called hybrids. Flowers, vegetables and fruit-trees may be bred by amateurs and commercial or non-commercial professionals: major crops are usually the provenance of the professionals.
There are two approaches or types of artificial selection, or selective breeding. First is the traditional "breeder’s approach" in which the breeder or experimenter applies "a known amount of selection to a single phenotypic trait" by examining the chosen trait and choosing to breed only those that exhibit higher or "extreme values" of that trait. The second is called "controlled natural selection," which is essentially natural selection in a controlled environment. In this, the breeder does not choose which individuals being tested "survive or reproduce," as he or she could in the traditional approach. There are also "selection experiments," which is a third approach and these are conducted in order to determine the "strength of natural selection in the wild." However, this is more often an observational approach as opposed to an experimental approach.
In animal breeding, techniques such as inbreeding, linebreeding, and outcrossing are utilized. In plant breeding, similar methods are used. Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been successful in producing change over time in his book, On the Origin of Species. The first chapter of the book discusses selective breeding and domestication of such animals as pigeons, cats, cattle, and dogs. Selective breeding was used by Darwin as a springboard to introduce the theory of natural selection, and to support it.
The deliberate exploitation of selective breeding to produce desired results has become very common in agriculture and experimental biology.
Selective breeding can be unintentional, e.g., resulting from the process of human cultivation; and it may also produce unintended – desirable or undesirable – results. For example, in some grains, an increase in seed size may have resulted from certain ploughing practices rather than from the intentional selection of larger seeds. Most likely, there has been an interdependence between natural and artificial factors that have resulted in plant domestication.
Usage examples of "selective breeding".
This makes them of considerable inter- est to domestic Cannabis cultivators wishing to reap the benefits of years of selective breeding for fine ganja by Indian farmers.
Millions of years of selective breeding had given the Mitchegai remarkably resilient bodies.
She's the result of many years of careful selective breeding, along with a bit of genetic engineering.
On one side he could see the Imperium, a Harkonnen called Feyd-Rautha who flashed toward him like a deadly blade, the Sardaukar raging off their planet to spread pogrom on Arrakis, the Guild conniving and plotting, the Bene Gesserit with their scheme of selective breeding.
In fact, the variability is so great that one can readily imagine selective breeding leading to entirely new species, given enough time.
The countless generations of selective breeding directed by the Bene Gesserits had achieved Muad'Dib, but nowhere in the Sisterhood's plans had they allowed for melange.