Homozygous tall pea plants look the same as heterozygus tall pea plants. formulate a pollination experiment to identify whether a tall pea plant is homozygous or heterozygous. explain your answer in 3 short sentences
To determine if a tall pea plant is homozygous or heterozygous, one can perform a test cross with a known homozygous recessive dwarf pea plant. The tall pea plant is pollinated with the pollen from the dwarf plant, and the resulting offspring are observed. If all the offspring are tall, then the tall plant is homozygous; if some offspring are dwarf, then the tall plant is heterozygous.
This experiment works because if the tall plant is homozygous (TT), all the offspring from the test cross will inherit a dominant allele for tallness from the tall parent (Tt). Therefore, the offspring will all be tall. However, if the tall plant is heterozygous (Tt), the offspring have a chance of inheriting the recessive allele for dwarfness from the test parent, resulting in some dwarf offspring.