Video Transcript
Mendel carried out experiments to
discover how the color of seeds was determined in pea plants. By what method did he create pea
plants that only produced yellow seeds? (A) Artificial insemination, (B)
repeated cross-pollination, (C) selective breeding, (D) repeated self-pollination,
(E) genetic engineering.
Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk
who lived in the 1800s. Mendel was an avid gardener and was
curious about how different traits were inherited by organisms. Mendel decided to conduct his own
experiments on pea plants to better understand inheritance of traits.
Pea plants have obviously
contrasting traits, such as smooth or wrinkled peas and green or yellow seeds. Mendel could easily study these
traits between generations. Another useful aspect of pea plants
is that they can self-pollinate or be cross-pollinated by other pea plants.
Mendel wanted to check whether
plants that produced yellow or green seeds themselves would have offspring that only
produced yellow or green seeds. To do this, Mendel self-pollinated
plants. For instance, a plant that produced
only yellow seeds was repeatedly self-pollinated to produce offspring that were
genetically identical to the parent plant. He determined that all the
offspring of this plant would only produce yellow seeds.
Using what we know about Mendel’s
experiments, we can identify our correct answer as option (D). Mendel created plants that only
produced yellow seeds by repeated self-pollination.
