Testcross
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The breeding of an individual with a phenotypically recessive individual, in order to determine the zygosity of the former by analysing proportions of offspring phenotypes.
"The inbreds of groups 3 and 4 have a distinct difference in plant height, except for a few selections, presumably because of some difference in selection pressure at low- and high-stand densities. Group means for testcross performance showed more progress in group 4 than in group 3 because of a difference in the number of low-yielding genotypes in the two groups."
- 2 a cross between an organism whose genotype for a certain trait is unknown and an organism that is homozygous recessive for that trait so the unknown genotype can be determined from that of the offspring wordnet
- 1 To breed an individual in this manner.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The inbreds of groups 3 and 4 have a distinct difference in plant height, except for a few selections, presumably because of some difference in selection pressure at low- and high-stand densities. Group means for testcross performance showed more progress in group 4 than in group 3 because of a difference in the number of low-yielding genotypes in the two groups."
Etymology
From test + cross.
More for "testcross"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.