Plant Breeding

How characteristics are inherited?

The characteristics of an organism are determined
by the genes inherited from the parents. The
parents may have different alleles of some genes
and these may combine in different ways in the
offspring. This gives rise to variation.

To explain how characteristics are inherited, we

can use the example of tongue rolling in humans. A person who can roll their tongue
may have inherited one allele for tongue rolling from their mother and another
from their father.

Dominant and Recessive Allele

We normally use alphabet to represent alleles; A, S, T (capital letters) are used to
represent the dominant alleles, while a, s, t (common letters) are used to
represent recessive alleles. The letters you choose are not important once you can
distinguish the dominant and recessive allele.

If the allele for tongue rolling is R (dominant allele) and

the allele for non-rolling is r, a person who can roll their
tongues would have the following combinations of alleles:
RR or Rr. a person unable to roll their tongue could only
have the combinations rr.

Genotype and Phenotype

When we write down the combinations for the alleles for a particular
characteristic we refer to it as genotype as it describes the genetic makeup for
example RR or Rr.

Whether the person is a tongue roller or a non-roller is described as the

phenotype: it is the appearance of the characteristic. Another example of
phenotype is the eye-colour of persons: person A can have green eyes while person
B can have brown eyes.

Homozygous and Heterozygous Alleles

Let’s start by breaking down the terms

Heterozygous Alleles: refers to two things being different or distinct from one
another. For example the genotype (Rr) has two different alleles and the person is
said to be heterozygous.

Homozygous Alleles: refers to two things being the same. For example, in RR both
alleles are the same and the person is said to be homozygous for the
characteristic.
Example A:

If both parents are homozygous dominant, RR, then all the children will be tongue
rollers.

Example B:

Let us see what happens if one parent (the mother) is RR and the other (the
father) is rr.

Note: we use the punnet square to calculate the genotype of the offspring

Steps to use the Punnet square:

● Always place the

dominant gene at the
top

● Match the first letter

of the dominant gene
to the two recessive gene in the first two boxes

● Then match the other letter of the dominant

gene with the two letters from the recessive
gene in the last 2 boxes

In this case, the father cannot roll his tongue, but the
children will inherit R from their mother and r from
their father. So all the children will have Rr as their genotype. As R is dominant,
they will all be tongue rollers.

Example C:

If both parents are heterozygous, Rr, then the children could be rollers or non-
rollers depending on which combination of alleles they inherit. We can draw a table
to show the possibilities.

In both parents, half the gametes will carry R allele and the
half r allele, so the table shows what the genotypes of the
offspring are likely to be. When we consider the phenotypes,
we can see that of the four possible combinations of alleles,
three will be rollers and one will be non-roller.

Inheritance in Plants
Characteristics in plants are inherited in exactly the
same way as shown above in tongue rolling example. In
pea plants, stem length is determined by a pair of
alleles. Stems can be tall (T) or dwarf (t). If a pure-
breeding (homozygous) tall plant (TT) is crossed with a pure-breeding dwarf (tt),
then the offspring will be tall but heterozygous.

If the offspring of this cross are interbred, there will be a mixture of tall and
dwarf plants produced as shown below:

The first crossing shown for the plants involves a pair of alleles which code for a
pair of contrasting characteristics; it is called Monohybrid inheritance. There is
not many examples of this type of inheritance in humans as most characteristics
are controlled by a group of genes. For example, height is controlled by many
genes: if you arrange people in your class in a line from the shortest to tallest
there might be a big difference between extremes, but differences between
individuals would be small.

In crop plants, some examples of monohybrid inheritance include flower colour,

seed shape and pod colour in peas, bitter taste in cucumbers and hairiness of stems
in tomatoes.

However, the appearance of a plant depends on environment as well as on the

combinations of its genes. If the growing conditions are not satisfactory and plants
do not get sufficient nutrition, they may not develop properly. For example, if
plants are deprived of light it will lack chlorophyll, be unable to make food by
photosynthesis and therefore will not grow to its full height.

Questions:

1. Distinguish between:
A. Genotype and phenotype
B. Dominant and recessive genes
C. Homozygous and heterozygous genes

2. If both plants contain the heterozygous genes for yellow flowers (Yy).
Calculate the genotype of the offspring using the punnet square.