Question

The number of vegetative characters considered by Mendel in pea plants is _____.
a. 3
b. 14
c. 7
d. Only 1

Answer 1

Hint: Mendel discovered that such traits occur in offspring without any mixture of parent characteristics through the selective cross-breeding of common pea plants (Pisum sativum) over several generations. This discovery that these characteristics do not occur in intermediate types of offspring plants was critically significant since the leading hypothesis in natural science at the time was that inherited characteristics blend from generation to generation.

Complete answer:
We must remember that 7 complementary vegetative characters were chosen by Mendel in the pea plant for his learning. These were-
• Seed colour- Yellow and green positioned on the 1st chromosome.
• Pod colour- Green and yellow situated on the 5th chromosome.
• Pod position- Axial and terminal traced on the 4th chromosome.
• Pod shape- Inflated and constricted situated on the 4th chromosome.
• Seed shape- Round and wrinkled positioned on 7th chromosome.
• The height of the plant stem- Tall and Dwarf positioned on the 4th chromosome.
• Flower colour- Violet and white situated on the 1st chromosome.

Hence, the correct answer is option (C).

Note: We need to know that the scientific community went for the most part untouched by Mendel's work, which mistakenly assumed that the inheritance mechanism involved a mixture of parental traits that created an intermediate physical appearance in offspring. Because of what we now know as continuous variation, this hypothetical mechanism seemed to be correct. Instead, Mendel worked with traits showing discontinuous variation. Discontinuous variation is the variation shown between people when each person displays one of two or very little easily obvious traits, such as violet or white flowers.