How do Mendel’s experiments show that the
(a) traits may be dominant or recessive
(b) traits are inherited independently?
(a) Mendel took pea plants having different characteristics, like a tall plant and a short plant. F1 progeny formed are all tall. There were no half way characteristics in the first generation i.e., there were no “medium height” plants. This means that only one of the parental traits, was seen and not the other. Here, the trait of tallness is dominant while dwarfness is the recessive characteristic.
(b) Mendel took pea plants with two different characters like tall plant with round seeds and a dwarf plant with wrinkled seeds.
FI progency are all tall and have round seeds. Tallness and round seeds are thus dominant traits.
In F2 progeny some are tall plants with round seeds and some were dwarf plants with wrinkled seeds.
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.