Question

During the 1950s, a scientist named Lysenko tried to solve the food shortages in the Soviet Union by breeding wheat that could grow in Siberia. He theorized that if individual wheat plants were exposed to cold, they would develop additional cold tolerance and pass it to their offspring. Based on the ideas of artificial and natural selection, do you think this project worked as planned

Answer 1

Answer:

No

Explanation:

Trofim Lysenko was a Biologist in the then Soviet Union, who did not believe in the fundamental laws of science. Selective breeding is the method developed by humans to change certain characteristics of species to desired outcomes. This is based on the fact that living things have inheritable traits encoded in genes that can be passed from one generation to another.

Lysenko did not believe in this fact. He rather believed that when exposed to the right environment, plants and animals soon become adjusted to the exposure and can then develop traits that would be passed on to their offsprings. He applied this theory of his when he exposed wheat plants to cold believing that they would develop tolerance to cold. This failed woefully and resulted in severe starvation that caused the death of millions of people in the Soviet Union.