Homozygous, tall pea plants look the same as heterozygous tall pea plants. Formulate a pollination experiment to identify whether a tall pea plant is homozygous or heterozygous. Explain your answer in 3 to 5 sentences.
To determine whether a tall pea plant is homozygous or heterozygous, you can conduct a pollination experiment known as a test cross. First, take the tall pea plant with unknown genotype and cross it with a known homozygous recessive short pea plant. If the tall pea plant is heterozygous (Tt), all the offspring will be tall. However, if the tall pea plant is homozygous dominant (TT), half of the offspring will be tall and half will be short. By analyzing the ratio of tall to short offspring, you can determine the genotype of the tall pea plant. This test cross experiment helps to clarify whether the tall plant is homozygous or heterozygous for the tall trait.
