Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
this ladies and gentlemen is what breeding is all about -
Understanding a trait's genotype, predicting the outcome of a cross
and LOCKING DOWN TRAITS. So how can we lock down a trait you
might ask? Well we will cover this later after we understand a bit more
about this subject matter.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Austrian monk who
discovered the basic rules of inheritance by analyzing results from his
plant breeding research programs.
He noticed that 2 types of Pea plants gave very uniform
results when breed within their own gene pool and not with one
another. The traits he noticed where:
(This is not a Punnett square. Just an example to show the different
phenotypes seen in two different Pea plant strains.)
He noticed that the offspring all carried the same traits when
they breed in with the same population or gene pool.
Now since there where no variations in with each strain he
guessed that both strains where homozygous for these traits. Because
the pea plants where from the same species Mendel guessed that either
the Solid seed shells where recessive or the wrinkled seed shells where
