Question

Which of the following is true for inbreeding?
(a) It increases homozygosity.
(b) It suppresses harmful recessive genes.
(c) It causes inbreeding depression.
(d) Both A and C.

Answer 1

Inbreeding refers to the mating of more closely related individuals within the same breed for 4-6 generations. It helps in the maintenance of a pure line of species.

Complete answer:
-The progeny obtained from mating superior males and superior females of the same breed are evaluated. Progeny with superior characters among them are identified for further mating. This ensures that better traits are retained generation after generation.
-It can concentrate genes for the superior ancestor
-Inbreeding helps in the determination of harmful genes that are eliminated by the selection procedure.
-Continuous inbreeding usually reduces fertility and even productivity, since there is no shuffling of DNA. This is called inbreeding depression.

Additional information:
-It helps in the accumulation of superior genes and the elimination of less desirable genes.
-Inbreeding increases autozygosity of loci throughout the genome, some of which cause homozygosity of recessive alleles.
-Fertility can be restored by mating with unrelated animals of the same breed. This is called outbreeding.
From the above data, it is clear that inbreeding increases homozygosity and can cause inbreeding depression. In such cases, outbreeding is preferred to increase phenotypic variability.

So the correct option is “Both A and C.”

Note: Inbreeding depression is typically expressed as one minus the ratio of the phenotypic values of offspring produced through self-fertilization. Inbreeding depression can lead to temporarily decreased biological fitness of a population.