ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how animal and plant breeders became major contributors in providing further explanations about heredity. Since the livelihood of breeders was strongly dependent on the creation of better crops or domestic animals, they monitored the transmission of advantageous traits and crossed such animals in the attempt to create high-yielding varieties with desired traits. Farmers and breeders performed such applied experiments long before the emergence of the modern science of heredity. Interest in selective breeding and the subsequent socioeconomic changes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries demanded answers from the society of scientists. This offered an alluring opportunity for all those who were curious about resolving the secret of heredity, since the prompt practical exploitation of this phenomenon promised a fast track to wealth and social prestige. Therefore, the ambitious began to focus on numerous cultivated plants and livestock.
