In a population of tomato plants, mean fruit weight is 6...

Question

In a population of tomato plants, mean fruit weight is 60 g and h² is 0.3. Predict the mean weight of the progeny if tomato plants whose fruit averaged 80 g were selected from the original population and interbred.

Accepted Answer

Hey everyone. Let's take a look at this question. Together, A fisherman decided to increase the growth rate of fish in his pond. He chose the longest fish by six weeks for breeding, which was 20 centimeters. The mean length of the fish population in his pond was centimeters. And the narrow sense heritability for the length of this fish population was found to be 0.5 determine the mean length of the fish population in the next generation. So for this problem we are going to use that narrow sense heritability which in this case H. Squared equals R. Over S. Where R. Is the selection response and it is the mean of the offspring minus the overall mean. And then s is that selection differential which is calculated as the mean of the parents minus that overall me. And so looking at the problem, we note that the narrow sense heritability is 0.5. So we have 0.5 equals and then we plug in our R. And S. Values. So because we don't have this mean of the offspring, because that is what we're trying to figure out in the next generation, we go ahead and do m minus the overall mean, which is 15. So m minus 15 over S. Which S equals the mean of the parents, which we can see is 20. So it's 20 minus that overall mean, which is 15. And we end up with 0.5 equals m minus 15/5. And we go ahead and multiply both sides by five to cancel that out and we end up with five times 0.5 equals m minus 15 and we add 15 to both sides to cancel those out. And we end up with 2.5 plus 15 equals M. So M equals 17.5, which is answer choice C. The correct answer. Because when we use that narrow sense heritability formula and plug in the values from the question, we end up with 17.5 as our M. Value, which is the mean of the offspring, which is what we're trying to find out because we want to know the mean length of the fish in the population for that next generation. So it is 17.5 and that is centimeters. So answer choice C. Is the correct answer. Hope you found this video to be helpful. Thank you and goodbye.

In a population of tomato plants, mean fruit weight is 60 g and h² is 0.3. Predict the mean weight of the progeny if tomato plants whose fruit averaged 80 g were selected from the original population and interbred.

Key Concepts

Heritability (h²)

Selection Differential

Response to Selection

Watch next