Question

A farmer found a plant with pretty red flowers growing wild. She thought they would sell well as cut flowers. She gathered a handful of seeds from the plant and planted them in her field. When they bloomed, 75% of the flowers were red and the rest were white, which made her suspect the red allele is completely dominant to the white allele. She would like to end up with as many red flowers as white flowers in her field. How will the allele frequencies have to change if she is to end up with 49–50% white flowers in the next generation, and how might she accomplish this based on the conditions re

Answer 1

quired for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

A. She will have to decrease the frequency of the red allele by 20 percent and could do it by encouraging new mutations of white alleles.

B. She will have to decrease the frequency of the red allele by 25 percent and could do it by choosing seeds from heterozygous red flowers.

C. She will have to decrease the frequency of the red allele by 25 percent and could do it by encouraging random mating among the flowers.

D. She will have to decrease the frequency of the red allele by 20 percent and could do it by artificially selecting for a few more white flowers.