In pea plants, the trait for purple flowers (P) is dominant over the trait for white flowers (p). If two heterozygous purple plants are crossed, what percentage of the offspring would be expected to have the same phenotype as the parents?
A. 25% (1/4)
B. 50% (2/4)
C. 100% (4/4)
D. 75% (3/4)
The genotype of the parent plants is Pp. When two heterozygous purple plants are crossed, there is a possibility of three different genotypes for the offspring: PP, Pp, and pp.
The PP genotype would result in purple flowers, which matches the phenotype of the parents.
The Pp genotype would also result in purple flowers because the purple trait is dominant over the white trait. Again, this matches the phenotype of the parents.
Only the pp genotype would result in white flowers, which does not match the phenotype of the parents.
Therefore, out of the three possible genotypes, two of them (PP and Pp) would result in the same phenotype as the parents.
The percentage of offspring that would have the same phenotype as the parents is therefore 2 out of 3, which is approximately 66.7%.
Since none of the given answer choices exactly match this percentage, it can be concluded that none of the answer choices are correct.