How do Mendel’s experiments show that traits may be dominant or recessive?
Answer:
Mendel performed breeding experiments on pea plants.
- Mendel took pea plants with different characteristics of the same criteria.
- He took a tall plant and a short plant and crossed them.
- In the F 1 generation, only tall variants appeared.
- On self-pollinating the F 1 generation, both tall and short plants appeared in the ratio 3:1.
- He concluded that the trait which appeared in the first generation is the dominant trait.
- This trait appeared when at least 1 allele coding for it was present in the genotype (i.e Tt and TT).
- The trait which only appeared when no other allele for another trait was present in the genotype of the 2nd generation is the recessive trait (i.e tt )
