#8: A matter of selection by Chase Lyles

           For our last story of the seed blog post my group and I looked at all of the plants in the garden to see which part of the plants had the most variation. We concluded that the leaves had the most amount of variation. Our Brussel sprout leaves were very small compared to the cabbage leaves. Our leaves were short and round while the cabbage leavers were very large and round.  All of the other plants also had very different shaped  leaves because  of there different size and/or shape.
 

   There are many reasons that there is variation between the different Brassica oleracea plants. One  of the reasons is due to mutations that helped some of the plants survive in a certain conditions  and/or of allele frequency that can change the appearance of the offspring from its parents.

 Out of all of the Brassica oleracea plants the part that is most consistent are the leaves. Each one of the leaves are colored some shade of green. Some of the leavers have veins and edges but most of them are all green even the veins and edges. other than the color the leaves  are very different in their shape, texture, and size. Some of the peppers are small and rough while others are smooth and large. For example my Brussel sprout plant has small leaves while other plants like the cabbage have very large leaves.

If a plant breeder wanted the largest Brussel sprouts they would have to breed the 2 largest Brussel sprouts in the hope that it turns out  to be large. This will not work 100% of the time however because there is always  a possibility of a mutation so the plant could turn out to be small. This is because of allele frequency. But most of the time that both parents have a specific phenotype then the offspring will be. So to get a plant with certain type of traits then the breeder will need 2 plants with that specific phenotype.



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