Question

Answer in about 40 to 80 words.
What is artificial hybridisation? By which technique is it achieved?

Answer 1

Hint: This process is usually employed for increasing the yield and quality of organisms. It ensures that crops or animals with the best traits and those that are disease resistant are selected and used.

Complete Answer:
- Artificial hybridization is defined as the process of crossing two genetically different individuals having desirable traits to obtain an offspring having superior traits than the parents. This includes animal breeding and plant breeding.
- The purpose of animal breeding is to maximise the yield of animals and to enhance the beneficial quality of the animal.
- Various techniques of breeding are used to increase the yield of livestock. They may be inbreeding, cross-breeding, etc. Inbreeding refers to the breeding of more closely related individuals of the same breed for four to six generations.
- The breeding strategy follows the selection of superior males and superior females of the same species and then mating them in pairs. The progeny produced from these mating is analysed and the superior males and females are marked for further mating.
- Plant breeding can be used to produce varieties that are resistant to diseases and insect pests. This raises the food yield.
- Plant hybridization has also been used to increase the protein content of food crops and thereby improving the quality of food. Classical plant breeding requires the crossing or hybridization of pure lines along with artificial selection to obtain plants with desirable characteristics like higher yield, nutrition, and disease tolerance.

Note: Hybridization has been used to increase crop yield and livestock production. Selective breeding, however, has its drawbacks. It may result in the extinction of certain species or original hybrid varieties.