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, a pollination experiment can be conducted. First, select two tall pea plants and cross-pollinate them. One of the parents should be known to be homozygous for tallness, while the other is unknown. If the resulting offspring are all tall plants, it would indicate that the unknown parent is homozygous for tallness. However, if some of the offspring are short plants, it would suggest that the unknown parent is heterozygous for tallness. This experiment relies on Mendel's law of segregation, which states that if a tall plant is heterozygous, it will have a 50% chance of producing short offspring when crossed with a homozygous short plant.
