Which practice allows plant breeders to select for desired traits through specific pollen usage?

Selective breeding is a practice that enables plant breeders to choose parent plants with desirable traits to produce offspring that inherit those traits. By selecting specific pollen from chosen parent plants, breeders can enhance characteristics such as disease resistance, yield, flavor, or other agronomic traits in the resulting progeny. This method relies on the natural reproductive processes of plants and emphasizes the importance of genetic variation and heritability in achieving specific outcomes.

This approach differs from natural selection, which occurs without human intervention and is based on environmental pressures, and genetic engineering, which involves directly modifying an organism's DNA using biotechnological techniques rather than breeding practices. Hybridization, while related, typically refers to the crossing of two different plants to create a hybrid, rather than the selective choice of pollen from specific plants aimed at enhancing desired traits systematically. Thus, selective breeding distinctly emphasizes the deliberate selection process for achieving targeted traits in offspring.