Question

You want to repeat Mendel's experiments with an eighth trial. You choose flower color. Pea plants have flowers that are white or colored. To get a pure-bred colored flower plant you start with a colored flower plant. What should you do next? Select one:

A. This is a pure-bred colored flower plant. Self-fertilize this plant. If all the flowers of the next generation are colored, the plant was pure-bred.
B. Cross-fertilize this plant with a colored flower plant.
C. Cross-fertilize this plant with a white flower plant.

Answer 1

This is in line with Mendel’s experiments, where true-breeding plants, when self-fertilized, only produced offspring with identical traits to themselves.The correct answer is (A).

Step-by-step explanation:

To replicate Mendel's experiments and obtain a pure-bred colored flower plant, you should start with a plant that you already know has colored flowers. Next, you should follow option A: self-fertilize this plant. If all the flowers of the next generation are colored, then the plant is confirmed to be pure-bred.

This self-fertilization test will allow you to confirm that the plant is indeed homozygous for the colored flower trait, meaning it carries two identical alleles for this characteristic.

During Mendel's experiments, he found that self-fertilization of hybrid plants led to a 3:1 ratio in the second generation (F2), with approximately three-quarters of the plants having the dominant trait (in his case, violet flowers), and one-quarter displaying the recessive trait (white flowers).

By ensuring that the parental generation (P) is purebred, you are establishing a baseline from which to observe the inheritance patterns of subsequent generations. Mendel's pattern of inheritance is a classic example of a monohybrid cross. Remember, the key is to establish that the initial plant is true-breeding by examining the traits of its offspring upon self-fertilization.