How did Mendel’s experiments show that different traits are inherited independently? Explain.
Mendel took pea plants with two different characteristics like tall plant with round seeds and a dwarf plant with wrinkled seeds.
(i) F1 progeny are all tall and have round seeds. Tallness and round seeds are thus dominant traits.
(it) In F2 progeny some are tall plants with round seeds and some were dwarf plants with wrinkled seeds.
(iii) But some F2 progeny shows new mixtures some tall having wrinkled seeds, while others dwarf having round seeds.
Therefore, tall/dwarf trait and round seed/wrinkled seed trait are independently inherited.