When you think of natural selection, you might imagine Charles Darwin's finches or animals on a wild savanna in a far-off land. However, you can find examples of natural selection in your garden.
Natural selection can affect the physique of a plant or animal and can change the behaviors of a population or a species. As evidenced in the Brassica oleracia plants that our class has grown, many of the plants have the same flowers. However, in the wild these plants can be extremely diverse and yet still share a similar DNA makeup.
In our class garden most of the Brassica oleracia are the same height, but plants in a certain planter are much taller than the rest. I believe this may be because these plants have grown to a size where they are able to fend off competing plants. However, in an adjacent planter, most of the Brassica oleracia have either had their growth stunted or been killed off.
Other differences between the plants include the amount of flowers, this can be attributed to a plant creating a more aggressive pollination tactic to snuff out the competition. The reason for this is that, the more flowers a plant has, the more chances it has to pass on it's DNA.
Though our Brassica oleracia plants are capable of producing a variety if different colored flowers, the ones in our garden are all the same, likely due to the fact that they come from the same seed packet and have been subjected to the same conditions -- soil, sunlight, weather, water, etc.
If a breeder were in need of a certain trait on a Brassica oleracia plant, they would first need to isolate the gene that trait is linked to. The breeder then would have to inject the gene into a seed or splice it into the DNA sequence. After this the only step is to wait for the seed to mature and hope for the best.
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