Question

What is the F2 generation?

Answer 1

The generation which is produced after the breeding of the offsprings that are produced by the parent plants. It is the second breeding outcome and thus leads to the changes in the phenotypic and genotypic ratio.

Complete answer:
The F2 generation is abbreviated as the second filial generation. It is the outcome of the dihybrid cross where two traits are taken and the parents are crossed together. The progeny formed will be called the F1 generation and is abbreviated as the first filial generation. Then these first filial generations are then again crossed then the resultant progeny or offspring will be known as the second filial generation. These F2 generations are different from each other in both the phenotypic and genotypic senses. It was observed and analyzed by Mendel in his pea experiment.
-According to the law of independent assortment, ”In a dihybrid cross, segregation of one pair of alleles or one pair of characters is independent of another pair of alleles or another pair of characters.”
-Mendel took a seed from the pea plant that has a yellow color and a round shape (YYRR) and then crossed it with another seed from the same plant that has green color and a wrinkled shape (yyrr).
-After crossing the progeny produced will have all yellow seeds and a round shape. The gametes that are produced from YyRr were YR, Yr, Yr, yr respectively in equal proportions. Thus following the law of independent assortment.
-When these F1 offsprings are selfed then they will result in the production of yellow round, yellow wrinkled, green round, and green wrinkled seeds in the ratio 9:3:3:1, which becomes their phenotypic ratio while their genotypic ratio is 1:1:2:2:4:2:2:1:1.

Note:
Gregor Mendel is known as the father of modern genetics who discovered basic principles of heredity through his experiments in his monastery’s garden. All humans are more than $99\%$ identical on the genetic level. Mendelian work was later discovered independently by three scientists-Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Tshermak.