outbreeding

[ outbrē′dĭng ]


  1. The mating or breeding of distantly related or unrelated individuals. Outbreeding often produces offspring of superior quality because it increases homozygosity (the occurrence of two alleles for the same trait at corresponding positions on homologous chromosomes), thereby sharply reducing the risk of deleterious recessive genes being expressed. Crossbreeding is the most common form of outbreeding.

Words Nearby outbreeding

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

How to use outbreeding in a sentence

  • The due adjustment of inbreeding and outbreeding is always a difficult problem of policy for breeders of animals.

    Folkways | William Graham Sumner
  • outbreeding (unless too far out) develops vigor at the expense of the characteristic traits.

    Folkways | William Graham Sumner
  • If so, there would be a school in which the advantages of outbreeding would appear as a fact, although not explained.

    Folkways | William Graham Sumner
  • We see some nations outbreeding others, or dominating them through superior organization.

    Taboo and Genetics | Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard