Question

If organisms inherited traits via blending inheritance, rather than Mendelian inheritance, what would we expect the offspring (F1 generation) of a blue-flowered plant and a yellow-flowered plant to look like

Answer 1

green-flowered plants

Step-by-step explanation:

In biology, blending inheritance refers to an erroneous theory from the XIX century, which proposed that the progeny (F1) inherits phenotypic traits as an average of parental phenotypic values. If this theory would be true then a crossing of a blue flower variety with a yellow variety of the same species would produce green-flowered progeny (since green is a combination of blue and yellow). Charles Darwin used pangenesis, a hypothetical mechanism for heredity that implied blending inheritance, in order to understand the transmission of hereditary characters. Darwin believed that different parts of the body generated heredity particles called 'gemmules' that aggregated in the gonads, and contributed to the transmission of heritable information to the next generation. The blending inheritance theory was replaced by Mendelian inheritance during the early 1900s.