Answer no 1)
Corn is a cereal grain which was first known to be domesticated by the people of south Mexico. Corn has been produced since then over the world due to many useful properties which it possesses. It is not only used as a food source but is also being used a fuel as corn ethanol. Nowadays, corn is being genetically modified to enhance its characteristics.
Answer No 2)
Plant domestication was important because it led to the development of agriculture. It allowed for the various techniques to be developed which were used in agriculture for better crop production.
Answer No 3)
Domestication can be described as a process for breeding certian plants and animals at home. Domestication allowed the animal species to be taken more care of and those species with better traits were interbred to produce offsprings with better traits. This allowed to increase the genetic diversity of the domesticated animals.
Answer No 4)
Selective breeding can be described as a process in which organisms of species having better characteristics are inter bred so that offsprings with better characteristics can be produced. This technique is very useful in domestication and agriculture.
Answer No 5)
Sedentism is a term which is used for describing the practise of living in one place for a long period of time. Before the process of domestication and agriculture, people moved from one place to another continuously. But certain factors caused sedentism which were:
1) domestication: Domestication made people to not move from one area to another as they had to take care of their plants and animals.
2) Agriculture: Domestication allowed agriculture to take place. People did not move because they had to take care of their crops.
3) Property: As the processes of domestication and agriculture increased, people started making properties like houses and it became more problematic for them to leave their homes after this process. Hence, the settled down.
Answer No 6)
By the processes of hunting and gathering, the early farmers came to know about the variety of plants and animals. They came to know that which plants would beneficial to grow and which animals were harmless for domestication. Their knowledge about plants such as herbal plants, food plants were later beneficial to early farmers.
Answer No 7)
Agriculture innovations can be considered as biotechnology because the phenomenon of selective breeding was applied to produce plants with better characteristics. Agricultural biotechnology also tends to produce plants with better qualities by manipulating their genome. Hence, agricultural innovations such as selective breeding can be considered to be a part of biotechnology or ancient biotechnology.
Answer No 8)
Sedentism was beneficial in a way that it allowed humans to settle in a place but their were certain drawbacks. Some of them are:
1) the area where the farmers settled could produce only certain types of crops.
2) If a disaster situation occurred, such as a pesticide then it wood infect all the crops and hence all crops would be destroyed.
Biotechnology enable to produce crops which are disease resistant or pest resistant. It also enable to produce crops in better varieties of quality and quantity.
Answer No 9)
Bakewell was an agriculturist who introduced the techniques of selective breeding and to improve the qualities of domesticated animals. Selective breeding can be considered as ancient biotechnology. In future, biotechnology was implied to produce plants and animals with better characteristics just like selective breeding.
Answer No 10)
Agriculture led to technological and biotechnological innovations so that the increasing demand for food resources can be met. As novel technologies, such as biotechnology, produce better varieties of crops hence their discovery led to the enhancement of agricultural field.
