Question

explain the role of variation in improvement the following
livestock
crop

Answer 1

The importance of genetic variation for plant breeding.’  Introduction Population  explosion,  increasing  urbanisation  and reduction in cultivatable land are some of  the critical issues that we are currently facing. Today we need maximum crop yields with less failure to fulfil current  and future food  demands, and it  is possible by  improving plant breeding  by genetic diversity.  In this essay, we will discuss Domestication, Marker-assisted selection, Speed breeding & Genome-wide association studies. 1. Domestication- 1.1 History of plant domestication - According to the old legends, humans received the ability to cultivate crops from gods. The ancient Greek myth says that “Demeter a goddess of harvest and fertility came on earth in a dragon-drawn chariot and blessed the humans with the knowledge of agriculture and civilisation” (Greekgods, 2019 Agriculture was a dramatic transformation in human history that brought humans together in groups and cities and civilisations born (Pringle, 1998). Domestication of plants played a significant role in the development of full-fledged agriculture in the Neolithic era. To feed the society, humans had to rely on  plants and  animals; therefore  they  slowly  started developing  harvesting crops  which  became resulted in agriculture and plant domestication (Pringle, 1998).   To define domesticated plant we can say that, “It is a plant that has been altered by humans from its wild  nature  so  that  it  cannot  grow  and  reproduce  without  human  intervention”  (Hirst,  2018) cauliflower and maize are the excellent examples of domesticated plants. Domestication of plants was a prolonged process where plants and humans both evolved together in over thousands of years.  1.2 Domesticated plants origin and diversity –  The early attempts of plant domestication were traced back to 11,000 BCE and occurred in the Middle East. Archaeologists found grains of rye in Syria which dated back to Epi-Palaeolithic period (13,000 years ago), this was the evidence that showed the origin of plant domestication in the period between upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic era (Hillman et al., 2001