If your parent pumpkin genotypes were AabbCC and AaBbCc, what is the largest pumpkin you can grow?

Question

In pumpkins, the weight of the pumpkin is controlled by multiple genes that add together. The weight for the pumpkin has the genotype aabbcc is 16oz and every dominant allele will add 6oz to the pumpkin's weight.

You are entering the World's Biggest Contest and need to grow a pumpkin that is at least 46 oz to win first price.

If your parent pumpkin genotypes were AabbCC and AaBbCc, what is the largest pumpkin you can grow? Will you win first prize?

Answer 1

For this problem, you would need to do a trihybrid punnett square. To do this, you will cross each allele combination. For example, if the genotypes being crossed are AabbCC and AaBbCc, then you would take the first allele combination and cross those, which would be AbC x ABC. My next allele combination that I would cross could be AbC x Abc. Once every allele combination has been crossed, you should get 12 unique allele combinations.

Since the genotype aabbcc is 16 oz, and it says that every additional dominant allele is 6 oz, you would find the allele combination that has the most dominant alleles, which would be AAbBCC. To solve this, I would do (16 oz + (6 oz x 5 dominant alleles)) = 46 oz. You would win first prize :)