Suppose you are breeder involved in breeding and showing exotic cats. You notice
ID: 83271 • Letter: S
Question
Suppose you are breeder involved in breeding and showing exotic cats. You notice that one litter of kittens contains a curly-haired male. This is the first time you have noted this genetic characteristic, and no one in the Cat Breeders Association has ever seen it before. Because the other kittens in the litter are not curly-haired, you reason that this novel trait must be due to a mutant recessive allele that has been hidden in this breed until now. It is a desirable trait, because the coat is soft and the hair does not fall out as readily as normal hair. This cat could sell for about $600. The normal cost of this breed of cat is about $250. You would obviously like to obtain more of these curly-haired animals. What type of breeding program would give you large numbers of curly-haired cats in the shortest time?Explanation / Answer
Mate the curly haired kitten with one of the parents.
If the trait is recessive, then the kitten has 2 copies of, one from each parent. Mating the offspring to the parent will produce curly haired kittens with a frequency of 50%. And this breeding is inbreeding. And it is widely used for desirable recessive traits.Inbreeding is a technique used in selective breeding. Breeders may use inbreeding when trying to establish a new and desirable trait in the stock, but will need to watch for undesirable characteristics in offspring, which can then be eliminated through further selective breeding or culling. Inbreeding is used to reveal deleterious recessive alleles, which can then be eliminated through assortative breeding or through culling.