What is concluded about one of Mendel's short pea plants?
A.It had one dominant and one recessive gene
B.It had a pair of recessive genes
C.It had a pair of dominant genes
D.It had no recessive genes
B?
That is what I would pick.
To determine the correct answer, let's review Mendel's principles of inheritance and how they apply to his pea plant experiments.
Mendel's experiments involved studying the inheritance of certain traits, such as plant height, in pea plants. He observed that some plants had a dominant trait while others had a recessive trait. Dominant traits are traits that are expressed or seen in the offspring, while recessive traits remain hidden unless the individual carries two copies of the recessive gene.
In the case of Mendel's short pea plants, if it had a pair of recessive genes for plant height, it means that both the alleles, or versions of the gene, inherited from each parent are recessive. Therefore, the correct answer would be B. It had a pair of recessive genes.
To arrive at this conclusion, Mendel would have likely performed a cross between two short pea plants. Through his experiments, he discovered that when two plants with the recessive gene for short height (let's call it "s") are crossed, all of their offspring would also have the recessive gene for short height (ss). Thus, the offspring plant exhibited a pair of recessive genes for the trait.