Changes

[[Image:Bird netting.jpg|thumb|230px|Netting protecting wine grapes from birds]]

[[Image:Bird netting.jpg|thumb|230px|Netting protecting wine grapes from birds]]

Domestication of plants is done in order to increase yield, improve disease resistance and drought tolerance, ease harvest and to improve the taste and [[nutrition]]al value and many other characteristics. Centuries of careful selection and breeding have had enormous effects on the characteristics of crop plants. Plant breeders use greenhouses and other

Domestication of plants is done in order to increase yield, improve disease resistance and drought tolerance, ease harvest and to improve the taste and [[nutrition]]al value and many other characteristics. Centuries of careful selection and breeding have had enormous effects on the characteristics of crop plants. Plant breeders use greenhouses and other techniques to get as many as three generations of plants per year so that they can make improvements all the more quickly.

techniques to get as many as three generations of plants per year so that they can make improvements all the more quickly.

Plant selection and breeding in the 1920s and 1930s improved [[pasture]] (grasses and clover) in New Zealand. Extensive radiation mutagenesis efforts (i.e. primitive genetic engineering) during the 1950s produced the modern commercial varieties of grains such as wheat, corn and barley.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

Plant selection and breeding in the 1920s and 1930s improved [[pasture]] (grasses and clover) in New Zealand. Extensive radiation mutagenesis efforts (i.e. primitive genetic engineering) during the 1950s produced the modern commercial varieties of grains such as wheat, corn and barley.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}