Monohybrid Cross

A monohybrid cross studies the inheritance of a single character - for example plant height - and therefore tracks the two alleles of one gene through a cross. When Mendel self-pollinated the tall F1 plants from a tall x dwarf cross, he counted 787 tall and 277 dwarf plants among 1,064 F2 individuals - the dwarf trait had disappeared completely in F1 only to reappear in roughly a quarter of F2. To predict and display the genotypes and phenotypes produced by a cross, geneticists use the Punnett square (or checkerboard method), a simple grid named after British geneticist Reginald C. Punnett that lines up all possible male and female gametes along its two edges and reads off every possible offspring combination - the same information can also be worked out with the alternative forkline method. Mendel additionally ran reciprocal crosses - pollinating tall plants with dwarf pollen, and dwarf plants with tall pollen - and found identical results either way, w …