Plant breeding methods. Is crossing different species of plants and animals a sin? Does it indicate the possibility of evolution?

We will tell you how to cross two varieties of the same plant species with each other - this method is called hybridization. Let these be plants of different colors or different shapes of petals and leaves. Or perhaps they will differ in flowering times or requirements external conditions?

Choose plants that bloom quickly to speed up the experiment. It is also better to start by choosing unpretentious flowers - for example, foxgloves, calendulas or delphiniums.

Progress of the experiment and observation diary

First, formulate your goals - what you want to get from the experiment. What desirable traits should new varieties have?

Keep a notebook-diary where you write down your goals and record the progress of the experiment from beginning to end.

Be sure to describe in detail the original plants and then the resulting hybrids. Here are the most important point: plant health, growth rate, size, color, aroma, flowering time.

Flower structure

In our article, we will use a flower as an example; you can see it in the diagram and in the photographs.

The appearance of flowers can vary significantly from plant to plant, but is generally the same.

Pollination of a flower

1. Start by choosing two plants. There will be one pollinator, and the other - seed plant. Choose healthy and vigorous plants.

2. Keep a close eye on the seed plant. Select an unopened bud with which you will carry out all the manipulations, and mark it. Moreover, it will have to isolate before opening– tying it in a light linen bag. As soon as the flower begins to open, cut off all the stamens to prevent accidental pollination.

3. Once the flower of the seed plant has fully opened, transfer pollen to it from a pollinating plant. Pollen can be transferred using a cotton swab, a brush, or by tearing out the stamens of a pollinating flower and bringing them directly to the seed. Apply pollen to the stigma of the flower of a seed plant.

4.Put on the flower of the seed plant linen bag. Don’t forget to make the necessary notes in your observation diary about the time of pollination.

5. To be on the safe side, repeat the pollination operation after some time - for example, after a couple of days (depending on the timing of flowering).

Obtaining hybrids

1. If pollination was successful, then soon the flower will begin to fade, and the ovary will increase. Do not remove the bag from the plant until the seeds are ripe.

2. Plant the resulting seeds as seedlings. When will you receive it? young hybrid plants, then give them a separate place in the garden or transplant them into boxes.

3. Now wait for the hybrids to bloom. Don't forget to write down all your observations in your diary. Among the first, and even the second generation, there may be flowers that exactly repeat the parental properties without changes. Such specimens are immediately rejected. Check in with your goals and select among the new plants received those that best suit necessary signs. You can also pollinate them by hand, or isolate them.

If you decide to seriously develop new varieties, then you will need the advice of a specialist breeder. The point is that you will need to find out whether you actually withdrew new variety or you are following a path already trodden by someone. Competition in the field of creating new varieties is very high.

For those who have decided to experiment with hybridization as a home hobby, we wish you to get a lot of pleasure from this activity, make many joyful discoveries and finally give all your gardener friends a new variety of some wonderful flower named after itself.

Oleg asks: “Hello, Elena! Tell me, please, crossbreeding by scientists various types plants, vegetables and fruits, isn’t interfering with God’s creation a sin? Doesn't such successful crossbreeding jeopardize Creationism? After all, if you manage to cross different plants, then over time you will be able to cross different animals, a cat and a dog, for example. So, is there a possibility that from one simpler living creature a more complex one emerged, and so on until the appearance of man?”

Greetings, Oleg!

Scientists-breeders mainly carry out intraspecific crossings (hybridization) to produce desirable traits (for humans, of course) in animals, plants and microorganisms, thereby achieving the creation of new or improved breeds, varieties, strains.

Within a species, crossing of individuals is relatively easy due to the similarity of their genetic material and anatomical and physiological characteristics. Although this is not always the case, for example, under natural conditions it is impossible to cross a tiny Chihuahua dog and a huge mastiff.

But already on the way of crossing individuals different types(and even more so of different genera), molecular genetic barriers arise that prevent the development of full-fledged organisms. And they are more pronounced the further the species and genera being crossed are separated from each other. Due to significantly different genomes of the parents, hybrids may develop unbalanced sets of chromosomes, unfavorable combinations of genes, the processes of cell division and formation of gametes (sex cells) may be disrupted, the death of the zygote (fertilized egg), etc. may occur. Hybrids can be partially or completely sterile (sterile) ), with reduced viability up to lethality (although in some cases in the first generation there is a sharp increase in viability - heterosis), developmental anomalies, in particular, reproductive organs, or so-called chimeric tissues (genetically heterogeneous), etc. may appear. Apparently, this is why the Lord warned His people: “... do not mix your cattle with another breed; do not sow your field with two kinds [of seeds]” ().

Under natural conditions, cases of interspecific crossing are extremely rare.

Examples of artificial distant hybridization are: mule (horse + donkey), bester (beluga + sterlet), liger (lion + tigress), tigon (tiger + lioness), leopon (lion + female leopard), plumcat (plum + apricot), clementine (orange + tangerine), etc. In some cases, scientists manage to remove Negative consequences distant hybridization, for example, produced fertile hybrids of wheat and rye (triticale), radish and cabbage (rafabrassica).

And now your questions. Is artificial hybridization interfering with God's creation? In a certain sense, yes, if a person creates an option that is different from natural, which can be compared, say, with women using decorative cosmetics to improve their appearance. Is artificial hybridization a sin? Is eating meat a sin? The Lord, out of our hardness of heart, allows the killing of living beings for food. Probably, also due to our hardness of heart, he allows selection experimentation in order to improve consumer properties people need products. In the same row is the creation medicines(in this case, laboratory animals are used and killed). As sad as it may be, all this is the reality of a society where sin reigns and the “prince of this world” rules.

Do successful crossbreeding jeopardize creationism? Not in any way. Against.

You know that everything reproduces “according to its kind.” There is no biblical "genus" biological species modern taxonomy. After all, a rich diversity of species appeared after the Flood as a result of the variability that occurred in the characteristics of land organisms from Noah’s Ark and aquatic inhabitants that survived outside the Ark, when adapting them to new conditions environment. It is difficult to delineate a biblical “genus,” the genetic potential of which is significant and was given initially at creation. It may include modern taxa such as species and genus, but probably not higher than (sub)family. It is possible, for example, that the big cats of the modern systematic genera of the cat family go back to one original “genus”, and the small cats to one or two others. It is clear that the species and genera separated from the biblical “genus” include their own, to some extent, depleted and altered (in relation to the original) genetic material. The combination of these not entirely complementary parts (in interspecific and intergeneric crosses) encounters obstacles at the molecular genetic level, which means it does not allow the formation of a full-fledged organism, although in rare cases this can happen within the biblical “genus”.

What does this mean? That in principle there can be no crossings between “cats and dogs” and “up to humans.”

One more moment. Compare 580 thousand nucleotide pairs, 482 genes in the DNA of a single-cell mycoplasma and 3.2 billion nucleotide pairs, about 30 thousand genes in human DNA. If you imagine a hypothetical path “from amoeba to man,” think about where the new genetic information came from? There is nowhere for it to come from naturally. We know that information only comes from an intelligent source. So who is the Author of amoeba and man?

God's blessings!

Read more on the topic "Creation":

From time immemorial, man has created hybrids of both plants and animals. The most ancient in the practice of animal husbandry are hybrids of a horse with a donkey (mule, hinny) and a zebra (zebroid), a one-humped camel with a two-humped camel (nar), a yak and a zebu with cattle. In pig farming, hybridization of domestic pigs with wild boar is practiced to improve adaptability to local conditions. The 20th century gave birth to many new hybrids: in poultry farming, fish farming and cattle breeding. And then there are ligers and tigons. And there is no end in sight...

Snail or plant?

Not long ago, a report appeared in the media about the discovery of a plant-animal hybrid. It was about a sea snail, which is three centimeters long, living on the Atlantic coast. North America. A group of scientists from US universities and South Korea named it Elysia chlorotica.

According to New Scientist magazine, these sea snails "are a form that lives on solar energy: They eat plants and have the ability to photosynthesize.” The hybrid found is a kind of green gelatin plant. It looks like a piece of wood and shares part of its months-preserving potential thanks to genes from the algae it consumes. Not only does the snail receive chloroplasts - intracellular organelles of the plant cell, where photosynthesis takes place, allowing plants to transform sunlight into energy - she still stores them in her cells located along the intestines. The most curious thing is that if Elysia chlorotica feeds on algae for the first time (two weeks), then for the rest of its life - on average, its duration does not exceed a year - it may not consume food. So far, scientists have not been able to uncover all the secrets of this strange creature, the DNA of whose chloroplasts contains only 10% of the encoded protein necessary for the active life of a snail. However, they published a number of observations and conclusions in the journals of the American Academy of Sciences.

It can't be because...

The discovery of a plant-animal hybrid caused a sensation in the scientific world, but the idea of ​​crossing animals with animals of similar species dawned on humanity many years ago. Classic example Hybridization is a mule - a hybrid of a mare and a donkey.

This is a strong, hardy animal that is used in much more difficult conditions than its parent forms. The mule owes this to a phenomenon called heterosis by scientists and observed in both domestic animals and plants: during interbreeding or interspecific crossings, the first generation hybrids experience particularly powerful development and increased viability. By the way, heterosis is widely used in industrial poultry farming, for example, in breeding broiler chickens and in pig farming. In nature, cases of crossing a wild animal with representatives of other species are extremely rare. Let's say Grant's and Thompson's gazelles coexist happily in mixed groups. These species have a lot of similarities, and only experts can distinguish them from each other. Despite this, there have been no cases of crossing between these two species.

Domestic dogs can mate indiscriminately with other species, but wild canid species such as wolves, foxes and coyotes only breed within their own species. In addition to the obvious reasons, this is also hampered by the fact that in many groups of animals and plants, interspecific crosses produce powerful but sterile hybrids, as illustrated by the aforementioned mule. Since there are many examples of sterile hybrids, scientists have come to the conclusion that the exchange of genes between different populations or population systems is weakened or prevented by various kinds of barriers, and if they interfere with the widespread hybridization of animals or plants of similar species, then they should interfere to an even greater extent with the emergence of a plant hybrid with an animal.

From numerous experiments, scientists have concluded that hybrids almost always appear in captivity as a result of unnatural living conditions or artificial insemination. Hybrids are funny... An example of this is the majestic liger - a hybrid of a male lion and a female tiger - the largest representative of the cat family. As well as the tiger lion - a cross between a male tiger and a female lion. However, tiger-rolves, or tigons, on the contrary, have a tendency towards dwarfism and are usually smaller in size than their parents. Male ligers and tigers are sterile. while females can sometimes bear offspring. One tiger lived from 1978 to 1998 in India, the other died at the age of 24 in 2003 in the Beijing Zoo. At the American Institute of Protected and Rare Species in Miami, there lives a liger named Hercules, whose height at the withers is 3 m.

The first liger cub appeared in our country at the Novosibirsk Zoo in 2004, and then two more liger cubs were born. Leopardolf is the result of crossing a male leopard with a female lion. His head looks like his mother's, and his body looks like his father's. But there are also hybrids of hybrids - these are crosses between a male tiger and a female liger/tiger, or a male lion and a female liger/tiger. Such second-level hybrids are extremely rare and are mostly privately owned. The beginnings of the process of crossbreeding big cats go back to the days when zoo owners wanted to get as many strange creatures as possible to attract the public. Hybridization dates back to the 1800s, when zoos were roving menageries designed to make a profit rather than preserve species. In India, for example, interspecific crossing was first recorded in 1837, when the princess of the Indian state of Jamnagar introduced a hybrid big cat Queen Victoria. Despite the fact that all these hybrids of giant felines invariably attract visitors to zoos, many scientists believe that this method of hybridization is futile and even harmful. In any case, there is no practical benefit from such hybrids, while they themselves are susceptible to disease and early death. ...and useful...

Recently, reports appeared in the domestic media about the successful hybridization of a she-wolf and a dog in the kennel of the canine department of the Perm Military Institute of Internal Troops. A significant part of the hybrid animals obtained there have well-defined signs of tolerance, that is, tolerance towards humans, which means that perhaps the main barrier to the practical use of wolf sperm in dog breeding can, in principle, be overcome. In addition, all wolf dogs are emotionally very reserved. They have much greater physical endurance than dogs. They quickly master an area with obstacles; they easily jump over a fence more than 2 meters high; shots and explosions do not frighten them. When trained, they very quickly understand and learn what is required of them, and, in addition, they undoubtedly have excellent sense of smell. Thus, the speed of detecting a conditional offender in caches during a search of an object does not exceed one minute, while for dogs it is 1.5-4 minutes, with a standard of up to 6 minutes. Of course, wolf-dogs, cold-resistant hybrids of carp with Amur carp, sheep with mouflon and argali are not as impressive as ligers and tigers, but they bring much more benefits to humanity. Life will tell what we can expect in the future from a tiny snail.

Some interesting photos work...

CENTAURS IN THE PLANT WORLD

"Centaurs" in the plant world. Achievements of Russian, European and American scientists. How the plum and everyone's favorite strawberry appeared. Creation of new varieties of wheat. The main achievement of Russian scientists is cabbage radish.

The list of plant “centaurs” is not at all limited to cabbage-radish hybrids. Thus, as a result of crossing two grain crops - rye and wheat - scientists obtained a number of forms, united by the common name triticale. Triticale has good yield, winter hardiness and is resistant to many wheat diseases. Thanks to hybridization wheat and a malicious field weed - wheatgrass - breeders obtained valuable plant varieties - wheat-wheatgrass hybrids that are resistant to lodging and have high yields. Another famous Russian breeder, I.V. Michurin, crossed Pennsylvania cherry (a very frost-resistant species, unlike the usual cherry) with bird cherry and synthesized a new plant, which he called cerapadus. Only much later was it discovered that cerapaduses spontaneously arise in the Pamirs, but in a slightly different way.

Growing plants at home is a very common hobby. But most hobbyists do not attach importance to the rules of caring for plants. Although this care takes very little time. And the result repays all the efforts expended. After all, if everything is done correctly, the plants will be healthy, grow well and delight their appearance. Therefore, every nature lover who grows plants needs to know the answers to at least the main questions related to this activity.

How to cross plants? Crossing of plants is carried out in order to obtain a new variety with the characteristics necessary for the breeder. Therefore, the first step is to decide what qualities are desired in the new plant. Then a selection of parent plants is made, each of which has one or more of these dominant qualities. It makes sense to use plants that have grown in different regions- this makes their heredity richer. But still, before you start breeding, you should still familiarize yourself with specialized literature, for example, with a description of the working methods of I.V. Michurin.

How to save a plant? There are times when a plant begins to die for some reason. The first sign is usually a painful condition of the leaves. Then you need to check the condition of the stem. If it has become too soft, brittle or rotten, then there is hope that the roots are healthy. But if they also deteriorate, it means that the plant has died. In other cases, you can try to save him. To do this you will have to cut off the damaged part. But the stems are not completely cut off, leaving at least a few centimeters above the ground. Then you need to place the plant so as to halve the amount of solar time it receives and water it moderately when the soil is completely dry. Such measures will help the plant fight the disease and new shoots will appear in a few months.

How to care for indoor plants? To keep plants healthy and looking beautiful, you need to follow several mandatory rules. First, you need to water them properly. You can’t overwater the plant; it’s better to underwater it. This should be done when the soil is dry. The water should be at room temperature. It must be remembered that tropical plants also require daily spraying. To others, an important condition for plant life, is lighting. You should definitely find out what lighting intensity and duration is required for the plant and provide it with the necessary conditions. Temperature is the third factor important for the life and health of plants. Suitable for most of them room temperature. But some species in colder regions need lower temperatures in winter. This can be achieved by placing the flower on a glazed balcony.