Why do we study Genetics ? Give its historical background?

Explanation

There are certain question which come in our mind like:
= Why an elephant always gives birth only to a baby elephant and not some other animal ?
= Or why a mango seed forms only a mango plant and not any other plant ?
= Given that they do are the offspring identical to their parents ?
= Or do they show differences in some of their characteristics?
= Why sibling sometimes look so similar to each other? Or sometimes even so different?
= These and several related questions are dealt with, scientifically, in a branch of biology known as Genetics.
= Genetics subject deals with the inheritance as well as the variation of characters from parents to offspring.
= Inheritance is the process by which characters are passed on from parent to progeny, it is the basis of heredity.
= Variation is the degree by which progeny differ from their parents.
= Variation means the differences among the members of a species and the progeny of the same parents.
= Historical Background : Human knew from as early as 8000-1000 B.C. that one of the causes of variation was hidden in sexual reproduction.
= They exploited the variations that were naturally present in the wild populations of plants and animals to selectively breed and select for organisms that possessed desirable characters.
= For example, through artificial selection and domestication from ancestral wild cows, we have well-known Indian breeds e.g. Sahiwal cows in Punjab.
= Though our ancestors knew about the inheritance of characters and variation, they had very little idea about the scientific basis of these phenomena.