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Concept
Outcrossing
Summary
Out-crossing or out-breeding is the technique of crossing between different breeds. This is the practice of introducing distantly related genetic material into a breeding line, thereby increasing genetic diversity.
Outcrossing can be a useful technique in animal breeding. The outcrossing breeder intends to remove the traits by using "new blood." With dominant traits, one can still see the expression of the traits and can remove those traits whether one outcrosses, line breeds or inbreeds. With recessive traits, outcrossing allows for the recessive traits to migrate across a population. Many traits are Mendelian and therefore exhibit a more complicated intermediate phenotype. The outcrossing breeder then may have individuals that have many deleterious genes that may be expressed by subsequent inbreeding. There is now a gamut of deleterious genes within each individual in many dog breeds.
Increasing the variation of genes or alleles within the gene pool may protect against extinction by stressors from the environment among inbred animal populations. For example, in this context, a recent veterinary medicine study tried to determine the genetic diversity within cat breeds.
A degree of outcrossing to avoid mating between very close relatives is believed to happen in the wild.
Outcrossing in plants is usually enforced by self-incompatibility.
Outcrossing in fungi involves syngamy between haploid cells produced by separate diploid individuals.
Life-history traits are said to increase the probability of outcrossing in fungi such as long-distance dispersal and persistence of the haploid stage. Some studies even show that fungi favor outcrossing in comparison to other mating types. In a study performed with the commercial button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, outcrossed populations of the fungi showed higher fitness than inbred ones in several fitness components.
Breeders inbreed within their genetic pool, attempting to maintain desirable traits and to cull those traits that are undesirable.
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