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Question
In one of his experiments with pea plants, Mendel observed that when a pure tall pea plant is crossed with a pure dwarf pea plant in the first generation, F1, only tall plants appear.
(a) What happens to the traits of the dwarf plants in this case?
(b) When the F1-generation plants were self-fertilised, he observed that in the plants of the second generation, F2, both tall plants and dwarf plants were present. Why it happened? Explain briefly.
Solution
(a) Being recessive, the dwarf trait gets masked by the dominant trait in the F1 generation.
(b) According to the law of segregation, the two alleles of a pair segregate or separate during gamete formation such that the gamete receives only one of the two factors. In heterozygous parents, two kinds of gametes are produced in equal proportions.
This can be explained by the following cross:-
