Nope, it always had the genetic capacity to produce corn but that capacity had to be brought out by selection.
No, it did not have the capacity to produce corn until it gained the proper mutations to its genome, which increased its diversity.
You think by simply choosing plants with the biggest flowers you are going to get a mutation for even bigger flowers? Don't think so. I think the favoring of the flowers simply selects the alleles/genes for the flower part of the plant and if you keep favoring them and selecting them and breeding them that's all it takes to make them into big cauliflower heads. Where does mutation play into that scenario?
Not all the plants have the exact same flower size. Mutations to the gene that causes the flower size makes some of them bigger and some of them smaller. When you pick the largest of the flowers, you are selecting for the mutated genes that cause larger flowers. Those larger flowers are going to have more mutations that make their flowers both bigger and smaller. When you pick the biggest of the largest flowers, you are selecting for the mutated genes that cause the big large flower. Those bigger larger flowers are going to have more mutation that make some of their flowers smaller and some of their flowers even more bigger and larger. When you pick the even more bigger and larger flower, you are selecting for the mutated genes that cause the even more bigger and larger flowers. Each of these steps is increasing the genetic diversity by including more and more mutated genes that cause bigger and bigger flowers and you don't have to loose any genes because there weren't any that keep the flowers smaller in the first place. Some genes might be replaced by the new ones, but they don't all have to.
Where does mutation enter into that? The genes/alleles for the big beautiful flower were already there but in the wild they weren't being favored so they never developed.
No, if the genes for the even bigger and larger flowers were already in there, then the flowers would already be even bigger and larger. It wasn't until after the mutation occured that they became a part of the genome.
If extra genes are involved, those are what keep getting favored by the selection of the best looking plants, of the biggest kernels and so on. You ALWAYS lose the undesired genes/alleles by doing that. That's the way it happens in dog breeds and cattle breeds, I see no reason it isn't how it would happen in plants as well.
The way it happens in dog and cattle breeds is a tiny subset of all the ways that evolution can happen. It does not represent the totality of evolution.
As an analogy, you're saying that because ceviche is cooked with lemon juice instead of heat, then you have no reason to think that any food is cooked with heat.
All I'm doing is emphsizing a ppart of the known processes of breeding that doesn't usually get emphasized although it's central to its working. It's crucial for the question of the validity of evolution.
Domestic breeding is actually a special case of evolution. It still fits within the model of the Theory of Evolution, but it does not represent how things work outside of domestic breeding. In fact, the
the wiki page on breeds has this to say:
quote:
Despite the centrality of the idea of "breeds" to animal husbandry, no scientifically accepted definition of the term exists. A breed is therefore not an objective or biologically verifiable classification but is instead a term of art amongst groups of breeders who share a consensus around what qualities make some members of a given species members of a nameable subset.
There's no reason to think that breeding results in ONLY the loss of genetic material. In fact, there's plenty of reason to doubt it. The wolf does not have some super genome with the genes to make its skull both the tiny size of a chihuahua and also huge size of a mastiff. Those skulls were the result of mutations to the wolfs genome that added to its genetic diversity.
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