Question

Assertion: Variety of fruit colours in Cucurbita pepo is the result of recessive epistasis
Reason: In recessive epistasis, a recessive gene at one locus enhances the expression of another gene, at a different locus.
A. Both assertion and reason are correct and the reason is the correct explanation for the assertion.
B. Both assertion and reason are correct but the reason is not the correct explanation for the assertion.
C. Assertion is correct but the reason is incorrect.
D. Both assertion and reason are incorrect.

Answer 1

Hint: Epistasis is a process in genetics in which the effect of a gene mutation is based on the presence or absence of mutations in one or more other genes. When two or more gene loci are present over a site and two or more genes control a single phenotype than the condition of epistasis arises.

Complete answer:
Cucurbita pepo is a cultivated plant which belongs to the genus Cucurbita. It gives several variations of winter squash and pumpkins also but the most common varieties of this genus are the summer squash. The plants are generally about 2.5 feet in height and about 2.3 wide and they generally have yellow flowers. It is most commonly used in rheumatism and swelling. A cataplasm of seeds and blossoms is used by the scratches due to the cactus plants. It is used all around the globe for the treatment of diseases as an antiviral, analgesic urinary disorder, antiulcer etc.
In the Cucurbita plants, the two genes are present for the colouring of the flowers. One is the yellow gene which is the dominant gene while the other is the green gene which is the recessive gene. The dominant epistasis is the process in which the one allele of the gene which shows can demand the effects of the other genes while the recessive epistasis is the process in which the two alleles should be inherited for the phenotype to be covered. So, in Cucurbita pepo, it is the case of dominant epistasis and not the recessive epistasis.
Hence, the correct answer is ‘D. Both assertion and reason are incorrect.’

Note: Cucurbita pepo is the species which hosts the melon worm moth, the squash vine borer, and the pickle worm. They are also the favourable pollen for squash bees. Cucurbitaceae are mostly found in the Andes and Mexico.