You are a botanist looking at the plant color in a new breed of Snapdragon. The two parent plants are Blue and Green and when you cross them you make F1 plants that are Cyan in color (a light aqua color). The ratio of offspring is as follows: There were 42 plants with Blue flowers (R1), 39 plants with Green flowers (R2) and 86 plants with Cyan flowers. Is the number of your progeny consistent with a single-gene incomplete dominance inheritance pattern

Incomplete dominance is the inheritance pattern where the dominant allele did not mask the recessive allele completely and form a mix of both alleles. Here the inheritance is the incomplete inheritance. The ratio of F2 generation is 1:2:1.

Given:

R1R1 = 42

R2R2 = 39

R1R2 = 86

Total R1 alleles = 2*42+86 = 170

Total R2 alleles = 2*39+86 = 164

Total alleles = 334

Frequency of allele R1 = 170/334 = 0.51

Frequency of allele R2 = 164 / 334 = 0.49

Expected number of each phenotype:

Total population = 167

Blue = R1R1 = 0.51 * 0.51 * 167 = 43.44

Green = R2R2 = 0.49 * 0.49 * 167 = 40.10

Cyan = 2*R1*R2 = 2*0.51*0.49*167 = 83.46

Phenotype     Observed(O)    Expected (E)    O-E      (O-E)2     (O-E)2/E

Blue                 42                   43.44               -1.44       2.0736     0.0477

cyan                86                   83.46                 2.54     6.4516     0.0773

green              39                    40.1                    -1.1       1.2100      0.0302

Total              167                     167                                               0.1552

Chi-square value = 0.155

Degrees of freedom = no. of phenotypes – 1

Df = 3-1 = 2

Critical value = 5.99

Chi-square value of 0.155 is less than the critical value of 5.99. So we accept the null hypothesis.