Homozygous tall (TT) pea plants look the same as heterozygous tall (Tt) pea plants. Formulate a pollination experiment to identify whether a tall pea plant is homozygous or heterozygous. Explain your answer in 3-5 sentences.(4 points)

Answer 1

To determine whether a tall pea plant (either TT or Tt) is homozygous tall (TT) or heterozygous tall (Tt), you can perform a simple test cross. This involves crossing the tall plant with a known homozygous recessive plant (tt), which is short. If the offspring produced from this cross are all tall, the tall parent must be homozygous (TT). However, if some offspring are short, this indicates that the tall plant is heterozygous (Tt), as it would pass the recessive allele to some of the offspring. By examining the ratio of tall to short offspring, you can ascertain the genotype of the original tall plant.