Plant Breeding
The application of genetic principles to produce plants that are more useful to humans is known as plant breeding. This process is done by choosing plants that are found to be aesthetically or economically desirable, firstly by controlling the mating of the selected plants, and then by selecting particular individuals from the progeny.
When repeated, these processes can change the hereditary value and makeup of a plant population far beyond the natural limits of the populations that have been existing. This process emphasizes the ways in which these genetic principles can be applied to the overall improvement of plants. Plant breeding has biological factors that are dealt with in heredity.
Plant breeding is a very old activity whose roots can be traced back to the very beginnings of agriculture. Most probably, humans began to recognize the degree of excellence among the plants in their fields after the earliest domestication of cereal grains. They then saved the best seeds for farming new crops. These kinds of methods were the front runners in the early days of plant breeding.
The results of all these procedures were conspicuous. Most verities these days are unable to survive due to them being so modified from their wild progenitors. There are a few cases, however, that it is difficult to even identify their ancestors as the cultivated forms are so strikingly different from the existing wild relatives. Early plant breeders accomplished these remarkable transformations in a very short time such that from an evolutionary point of view, this was a greater rate of change compared to any other evolutionary event.
Education
Now you know their breeding behavior and how to breed larvae, but how do you get them to breed in the first place? Well, first of all, you have to give them the right environment and good food so that they are in a state where they can reproduce. Some species also need different stimuli to reproduce. These stimuli can be a change in the amount of light and the number of hours of light, a change in temperature, a change in blood circulation, etc.
Feed
Crayfish are generally accepting of most types of food, and I would recommend feeding them a diet based on boiled lettuce, soaked pellets, shrimp, and, once a week or so, on fish meat. This will put them in good shape and help the female survive the spawning period, as she usually does not eat while carrying the eggs.
Housing/environment
Many types of crayfish can be kept in relatively small aquariums, but I recommend using larger aquariums as this reduces the pressure of males on females. The aquarium should be decorated in such a way that there are several hiding places of the appropriate size. Hiding places can be created using rocks, roots, flower pots, coconuts, PVC pipes, etc. It is important to have at least one computer technology component and preferably several hiding places for each lobster.
Now let’s look at what plant breeding achieves. Usually, in their mind, a plant breeder has an ideal plant that can combine a maximum number of desirable characteristics. Some of these characteristics can include, resistances to insects and diseases, sustaining in soil salinity, tolerance to heat, or frost; appropriate shape, time to maturity and size; and a lot more specific and general traits that help to improve the ease in handling and growing, adaptation to the environment, better quality and greater yield.
If one is breeding horticulture then they have to also keep in mind the aesthetic appeal. Hence, it is rarely ever possible for a breeder to only have their attention set on any one characteristic, they rather have to keep in mind the manifold traits that make the plant more akin to satisfying the purpose for which it was grown.
Lobster Farming
In the text below, I will try to give a brief overview of some of the basics of lobster farming. Some species may have other behaviors and demands. It must be said that my main experience as an aquarium doctor relates to fish, but I will try to convey the little knowledge that I have.
Having a lobster isn’t always easy. The genital openings are located in different places on the body, depending on whether it is a man or a woman. Males have genital openings behind/below the pair of hind legs. Females have genital openings under the third pair of legs that are counted from behind. However, many people have both a male and a female genital opening, which makes determining more complicated. But these are always men or women; Generally male, but you can’t be sure.
Mating and transferring eggs
In aquariums, spawning can be done at any time of the year. The male makes a small bundle of sperm and places it in the female’s stomach. Then the female gives birth to her eggs and passes them through the sperm packaging until the eggs are fertilized. It is not uncommon for a female to lose a claw during this process. He then lays eggs under his tail where they will be kept until the time of release. The duration will depend on the temperature of the water and the species, but it will be at least 4 weeks. Many other factors can also affect the length of time an egg is loaded, such as water quality and food supply and quality. The mother takes care of her young for a short time after birth.
Fry
The fry is very small when they hatch but are fully grown from crayfish. Fingerlings usually feed on debris, which means they feed on decaying plant parts and food scraps they can find while cleaning the bottom. It prefers plant food and can be fed with boiled lettuce leaves that are left to decompose in the sink. Be aware of the water quality. Fingerlings are often very cannibals and a large aquarium is needed if you want more fingerlings to survive. Sorting the larvae by size can help with the survival rate.
Genetics
The study of the heredity of genes in particular and anything, in general, is known as genetics. Genetics is one of the main pillars of biology and is used in conjunction with many other subjects and areas like agriculture, biotechnology, and medicine. Since the earliest days of civilization, humans have seen and recognized the influence of heredity and have used its nature to improve cultivated crops and domesticated animals.
Genetics was brought to light with the identification of genes as they are the fundamental units that are responsible for heredity. The study of genes at all levels, including the ways in which they are transmitted from parent to offspring and in the ways in which they act in the cell, is called genetics. Modern genetics has its focus set on DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid, the chemical substance that the genes are made of. They study the ways in which DNA affects the chemical reactions that constitute the living process within the cell. Gene action is dependant on its interaction with the environment.
Perhaps no one has more enemies than a plant man, nor more than a tireless one. These are plant diseases. It looks like they got into a conspiracy against agricultural science like the laboratory conspiracy against disease. Once a plant develops resistance to a particular disease, nature begins to design new weapons to overcome that resistance. Nature doesn’t seem to care whether a plant or disease will win. It’s the old story of survival of the fittest. But the task of the Plant Man is to help his subjects win.
The Beltsville Plant and US Government Soil Research Facility have a “death bed” for tomato plants. It is a large box filled with moist soil held at 80 degrees by electric coils, and an ideal place for fusarium wilt, a fungus that is fatal to most tomato plants. The spoils of a young plant are cut into a mushroom suspension and then planted on a ‘death bed’.
Unless tomatoes are very wilt-resistant, they will quickly wither and die. The “deathbed” has been useful in developing and testing plants for wilt resistance and has been very successful. From these experiments emerged the famous pan-American tomato, which is now well distributed throughout the United States and a great source of income.
Pan America is a mosaic of genetics, an excellent example of plant breeding to defeat the disease. Some time ago, Mar-Globe tomatoes were developed by crossing Marvel, which is resistant to wilt and nail spots, with Globe, which is susceptible to both diseases. Marvel’s fruits were very small, but in the new crossover, the larger size of the Globe was combined with Marvel’s disease resistance.
Then the department’s plant introduction department found small wild tomatoes growing in the Peruvian fields. There was no sign of any plant wilting, and it was handed over to the men seeking improvement at Mar Globe. They provoked the new Peruvian plant, tested its resistance to wilt on the “death bed” and crossed the wild plant with Mar Globe.
For example, green plants have genes that contain information that is necessary to manufacture the photosynthetic pigment that is chlorophyll, that gives them their green color. Chlorophyll is manufactured in a place where light is a resource because the gene for chlorophyll is only expressed when the plant interacts with light. Chlorophyll synthesis stops if the plant is in a dark environment as without the light the gene is no longer expressed.
Between the lives of Aristotle and Mendel, there were two millennia in which a few new ideas were introduced on the nature of heredity. The idea of preformation was used in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was partly due to the scientists using the invention of the microscopes and began experimenting and researching. Mendel’s experimentations were the ones that brought the theories for hereditary mechanisms out of the logic and speculating zone.
He studied the inheritance in peas by using cross-pollinating experiments. To do this he took pollen from the stamen of one plant and then transferred it to the stigma of the other. He removed the anthers from the recipient plant before the transfer, so as to prevent self-pollination. The results showed the colors of these plants change after breeding the two cross-pollinated plants. The pea color genes and their forms are called alleles.
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