Question

How many true breeding pea plant varieties were selected by mendel?
A) 14
B) 7
C) 21
D) 2

Answer 1

Hint: When a plant undergoes continuous self-pollination and shows a stable inheritance of a particular trait and it gets expressed for several generations, it is known as a true breeding line.

Complete answer:
Before looking into the answer let's have a brief overview on mendel's experiments using peas.During the 1800s, an austrian monk named Gregory Mendel uncovered the secrets of heredity or the inheritance of characters from parents into their offspring. He used garden peas for his experiments on heredity. Although his test subjects were peas, his conclusions are applicable to people as well as peas, and to all other beings which reproduce sexually.Mendel, who is also known as father of genetics, chose 14 true breeding pea plant varieties for his experiment. Now, let's look through the option for a correct answer.
Since, mendel chose 14 varieties of true breeding pea plant, this is the correct option.

Thus, the correct answer is, option (A) 14.

Additional information:
Mendel chose pea plant because of the following characteristics:
>Pea plants have a shorter life span and are easy to maintain.
>Self pollination and cross pollination can be easily done on pea plants, since they are self pollinating in nature.
>Pea plants have several observable characteristics, such as petal colour and pea colour.
>Flowers of pea plants show bisexual characteristics.

Note: The seven traits analysed by Mendel on pea plants were:
i) Pea shape ( round or wrinkled )
ii) Pea colour ( green and yellow )
iii) Pod shape (constricted or inflated )
iv) Pod colour ( green or yellow )
v) Flower colour ( purple or white )
vi) Plant size ( tall or dwarf )
vii) Position of flowers ( axial or terminal)