Do you consider selective breeding a kind of "genetic engineering"?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

a lot of people say they won't eat genetically modified foods because it's "unnatural". However, most of the food we eat are domesticated versions of plants which have been selectively bred over the course of millennia to make it easier for us to consume. So would selectively breeding the crops be "genetically modifying" them since you're artificially altering their genome?

Yes

No

[Surely]

Selective breeding has been going on since the beginning of time. In animals. Only the strong were able to breed with their females.
Orchards have been selective cross pollination for better health and taste of fruits.
With GMO. Usually the seeds produced from the parent plant will either not grow. Or not produce a plant similar to the parent plant.
So the days of planting your own seeds are over. One or two huge disasters. There be a lot of hungry people!

[abc3643]

It is genetic engineering, but done so at a macroscopic level.

[purplepoppy]

Yes in a way, but it's a more natural form. We select for the genes we want but they have to present in the first place and we don't modify them. There is no adding fish genes to strawberries.

Carrots used to be white until fairy recently, they were turned orange to please the Dutch king.

[Gwendoline]

The problem with GMOs is that they are being used to create large amounts of produce that is not nutritious and then there is the damage to the environment. We are starting to see the consequences of modern agriculture.

[contentious]

It's not genetic engineering because you are not using laboratory based technologies to alter the DNA of the organism. More specifically, you aren't adding the genes of foreign species to form transgenic plants.

[contentious]

In selective breading you cross pollinate parent specimens with desirable traits and then select those child specimens with the best traits for the next generation. You continue that approach until you get stable traits that you desire. At that point those lines can go into seed production and eventually into crop production.

[exitseven]

Selective breeding is a natural process. The species that are bred together are already similar. Creating GMOs are taking two different species and splicing their genetic material together.

[DrPepper12]

Breeding is genetic engineering. Nothing wrong with it either.

[goaded]

Not really. It's unnatural selection, but it's not the same as, say, putting a gene from a fish into a tomato.

[Kelley1]

No because selective breeding is not gene splicing.

[alice55]

I don't know but it's not a good things to do those stuff it's dangerous for the health

[seeyounexttuesday]

You think there's no difference between breeding a new tomato from other tomatoes and glyphosate resistant corn that has to be leased to farmers?

[mattthefatbat]

Its been a small big step

[Sal_Monella]

That is exactly what it is.

[jahaims]

By definition it isn't