Farmer Brown grows corn for a living. One day, Farmer Green suggests to Farmer Brown that he should clone his best corn plant in
order to produce more ears of corn per plant. Farmer Brown is not sure about Farmer Green's idea. Why might Farmer Brown be hesitant to clone his corn?
A) Cloning the corn plants is difficult and expensive to accomplish.
B) The cloned corn would not have the same taste as the original plants.
C) Cloning eliminates the ability to sexually reproduce and provide genetic variability.
D) Cloned plants would have increased genetic variability as well as a shortened life expectancy.
Cloning reproduces the exact same crops identical to the plant from which the cloning tissue was taken. While this has the capacity to preserve the purity of a breed of plants with desired characteristics, it can also have undesirable effects. Without sexual reproduction, there would be no genetic variability of the crop. This means the plant will hardly adapt to environmental changes and could go extinct if not further genetically engineered.
