Laboratory Manual in Biology

Name: _______________________ CYS: _________ Date: ___________

Activity 10: Genetics Problems

Genetics is the study of how traits are passed from parents to offspring. Offspring
usually show some traits of each parent. The Mendel’s principles of unit characters and
dominance and the laws of segregation and independent assortment from his experiment on
garden peas stand today practically unchanged. His conclusions concerning the inheritance of
traits were based on the study of many generations of garden peas. Since it is difficult to study
several generations of plants and animals during this course, several situations were provided
to study the Mendelian laws and principles of inheritance and determine the expected ratios of
offspring from parents whose genotypes are provided.
A. Mendel’s Experiment
1. Mendel made the following crosses with garden pea plants. Compare the Punnett
square and answer the questions about each cross.
A. R R

R R
R

B. r

R r

r
C.
R

D. R r

r
Laboratory Manual in Biology

1. He crossed a red flowered R plant with a white flowered, r plant. His results were 126 red
flowered plants and 122 white flowers. Which of the Punnett squares in your work in the
previous page best shows the parents and offspring that could give these results?
________________
2 He crossed a red flowered plant with a white flowered. His results were 307 red flowered
plants and 0 white flowered plants. Which of the Punnett squares on the previous page best
shows the parents and offspring that could give these results? __________________

3. He crossed a red flowered plant with a white flowered. His results were 306 red flowered
plants and 110 white flowered plants. Which of the Punnett squares on the previous page best
shows the parents and offspring that could give these results? ___________
4. He crossed red flowered plant with a red flowered plant. His results were 300 red flowered
plants and 0 white flowered plants. Which of the Punnett squares on the previous page best
shows the parents and offspring that could give these results? ___________

B. Genetics problems in Agriculture

Fill in the Punnett squares to solve each of the following problems and answer the questions.
1. Imagine that raise guinea pigs to sell and that brown guinea pigs are your best sellers. In
guinea pigs, black coat color, B is dominant to brown coat color, b. Show the expected offspring
from the mating of the following parents. From which pair could you raise the greatest number of
guinea pigs?

a) Black male Bb X brown female bb

Offspring will be: Genes: ______________ Traits: ________________

Laboratory Manual in Biology

b) Black male Bb X brown female bb

Offspring will be: Genes: ______________ Traits: ________________

c) Brown male bb X brown female BB

Offspring will be: Genes: ______________

Traits: ________________

2. In tomatoes, red fruit color. R is dominant to yellow fruit color, r. A farmer has tomatoes that
produces either red or yellow tomatoes. He has signed a contract with a large seed company to
provide pure red RR and yellow rr seeds. The seed company does not want any heterozygous,
Rr seeds. How could the farmer tell if his tomatoes are pure or heterozygous?

R
r r
r

Offspring will be: Genes: ______________

Traits: ________________

r r

Offspring will be: Genes: ______________

Traits: ________________