Q1.
In 1866, Gregor Mendel published the results of his investigations into inheritance in garden
pea plants.
The diagram below shows the results Mendel obtained in one investigation with purple-
flowered and white-flowered pea plants.
(a) (i) Calculate the ratio of purple-flowered plants to white-flowered plants in the F2
generation.
Ratio of purple : white = ________________________
(1)
(ii) There was a total of 929 plants in the F2 generation.
Mendel thought that the production of a large number of offspring plants
improved the investigation.
Explain why.
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(2)
(b) (i) Some of the plants in the diagram are homozygous for flower colour and some
are heterozygous.
Complete the table to show whether each of the plants is homozygous or
heterozygous. For each plant, tick ( ) one box.
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Homozygous Heterozygous
Purple-flowered plant in the P generation
White-flowered plant in the P generation
Purple-flowered plant in the F1
generation
(2)
(ii) Draw a genetic diagram to show how self-pollination of the F1 purple-flowered
plants produced mainly purple-flowered offspring in the F2 generation together
with some white-flowered offspring.
Use the following symbols:
N = allele for purple flower colour
n = allele for white flower colour
(3)
(c) When Mendel published his work on genetics, other scientists at the time did not
realise how important it was.
Suggest two reasons why.
1. _________________________________________________________________
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2. _________________________________________________________________
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(2)
(Total 10 marks)
Q2.
In the 1860s, Gregor Mendel studied inheritance in nearly 30 000 pea plants. Pea plants
can produce either round seeds or wrinkled seeds.
(a) Mendel crossed plants that always produced round seeds with plants that always
produced wrinkled seeds.
He found that all the seeds produced from the cross were round.
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Use the symbol A to represent the dominant allele and a to represent the recessive
allele.
Which alleles did the seeds from the cross have?
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(1)
(b) Mendel grew hundreds of plants from the seeds of the offspring.
He crossed these plants with each other.
(i) Mendel’s crosses produced 5496 round pea seeds and 1832 wrinkled pea
seeds.
Explain why Mendel’s crosses gave him these results.
In your answer you should use:
• a genetic diagram
• the symbols A and a.
(3)
(ii) One of Mendel’s crosses produced 19 round seeds and 16 wrinkled seeds.
These numbers do not match the expected ratio of round and wrinkled seeds.
Suggest why.
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(1)
(c) The importance of Mendel’s discovery was not recognised until many years after his
death.
Give one reason why.
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(1)
(Total 6 marks)
Q3.
The diagram shows one of the experiments performed by a scientist called Mendel in the
1850s. He bred pea plants which had different coloured pea seeds.
(a) Use words from the box to help you to explain the results of this experiment.
dominant factor recessive
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(3)
(b) Mendel explained these results in terms of inherited factors.
(i) What do we now call inherited factors?
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(1)
(ii) Where, in a cell, are these inherited factors found?
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(1)
(Total 5 marks)
Q4.
One of Mendel’s original experiments was to cross pure-breeding, red-flowering pea
plants with pure-breeding white-flowering pea plants. The next year he grew the seed he
had collected. This first generation, F1, of pea plants all had red flowers. Mendel then
made each flower on these plants self-pollinate. He collected the seed from these flowers
and grew them. The second generation, F2, gave the following result:
705 red-flowering plants and 224 white-flowering plants.
(a) Which flower colour is due to the recessive allele?
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(1)
(b) Draw a genetic diagram to show the inheritance of flower colour in the first
generation (F1) of plants.
Use the letters r and R to represent the alleles for flower colour.
(3)
(c) Explain why Mendel made the first generation of plants self-pollinate.
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(2)
(d) If Mendel had taken any two of his white-flowering peas and crossed them, what
would have been the colour of the flowers of the next generation of plants?
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(1)
(e) It is very difficult to get red-flowering pea plants that breed true. Explain why you
cannot guarantee to breed, by self-pollination, pea plants that only have red flowers.
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(2)
(Total 9 marks)
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