A mating between a true breeding red, long-stamen plant with a true breeding white, short-stamen plant yields a red, long F1. This F1 is self-fertilized to produce an F2 generation that has 875 red long-stamen plants, 295 red short-stamen plants, 315 white long-stamen plants, and 100 white short-stamen plants. What can you conclude? 1. The genes are tightly linked. 2. The genes are not tightly linked or maybe even located on a separate chromosome. 3. That the genes were so tightly linked that no observable crossover events between the genes occurred.

This question can be explained with the concepts advocated by Mendel in the law known as the law of segregation (or Mendel's second law). This law explains that the crossing between a dominant homozygous organism and a recessive homozygous organism (a true long-stemmed red plant with a real short-stemmed white plant) generates a totally heterozygous offspring, called F1. This is defended by Mendel's first law.

However, in Mendel's second law, we can see that the genes are not closely linked or maybe even located on a separate chromosome. This is because when crosses between F1 organisms occur, the offspring have a very wide variety of combinations of alleles and phenotypes, which would not occur if the genes were linked. This indicates that genes are inherited independently, because they are not linked and are sometimes on different chromosomes.