Final answer:
A monohybrid cross is a mating between two purebred individuals who differ in a single characteristic. When Mendel performed monohybrid crosses with his pea plants, he found that the offspring displayed a dominant trait while the recessive trait was hidden. This helped him understand principles of inheritance and the dominance of certain traits.
Step-by-step explanation:
A monohybrid cross is a mating between two purebred individuals who differ in a single characteristic. In Mendel's monohybrid crosses, he mated purebred pea plants that differed in traits such as pod color or seed shape. For example, he would mate a purebred yellow pea plant with a purebred green pea plant.
Through his experiments, Mendel discovered that when two purebred individuals with different traits are crossed, the offspring will display only one of the traits, which he referred to as dominant, while the other trait would be hidden, or recessive.