Question

In order to carry out the testcross, you should cross your original pea plant with another pea plant whose phenotype is ____________ .

Answer 1

My pea plant has an unknown genotype for flowers, whether it has two dominant traits for white flowers (WW) or one dominant and one recessive (Ww) leading to white flowers; therefore I am doing a testcross in order to determine the genotype of my pea plant. The best plant to do this with is one that has a phenotype of purple flowers (ww) - that is, it is homozygous for the recessive trait. If I use a homozygous recessive plant, I know exactly what its genotype is. I don't have to worry about whether it's got one or two dominant alleles; I know that at least half of my alleles are going to be the recessive w. This makes identifying the offspring's genotype very simple. If I find that the offspring have at least some purple flowers among them, I know that my original plant had to be Ww; that is it had to have one dominant and one recessive allele for the flower color gene. If, however, all of the offspring are white flowers, I know that my original pea plant had both dominant alleles (WW).