Do the alleles for different characters always sortindependently?

In biology lab, you conduct a breeding experiment to testMendel?s law of independent assortment. You study two characters ina new plant species recently discovered on campus:

Flower color, which can be blue (BB) or purple(bb)

Petal shape, which can be pointy (PP) or rounded(pp)

You use the following procedure.

In the parental generation, you breed a plant that you know tobe homozygous for blue-pointy flowers (BBPP) with a plantthat you know to be homozygous for purple-rounded flowers(bbpp).

In the F₁ generation, all your plants haveblue-pointy flowers (BbPp).

You then allow the F₁ plants to self-pollinate toproduce F₂ offspring. In the F₂ generation,you obtain 80 plants with the following phenotypes. Note that anunderscore ?_? in the genotype indicates that the second allele forthat gene could be either dominant or recessive:

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mostly BP and bp BP, Bp, bP, bp in equal numbers 2 predominant phenotypes 4 phenotypes 3 blue-pointy: 1 purple- rounded 9 blue-pointy: 1 purple- rounded no yes Predicted F₁ gametes Predicted number of phenotypes in F₂ offspring Predicted ratio of phenotypes in F₂ offspring Hypothesis supported by the data? a Hypothesis 1 (independent assortment) BP, Bp, bP, bp in equal numbers 4 phenotypes 9 blue-pointy: 3 blue-rounded: 3 purple-pointy: 1 purple-rounded yes b (d) f h Hypothesis 2 mostly BP and bp © (e) O Hypothesis 3 mostly BP and bp BP, Bp, bP, bp in equal numbers 2 predominant phenotypes 4 phenotypes 3 blue-pointy: 1 purple- rounded 9 blue-pointy: 1 purple- rounded no yes Predicted F₁ gametes Predicted number of phenotypes in F₂ offspring Predicted ratio of phenotypes in F₂ offspring Hypothesis supported by the data? a Hypothesis 1 (independent assortment) BP, Bp, bP, bp in equal numbers 4 phenotypes 9 blue-pointy: 3 blue-rounded: 3 purple-pointy: 1 purple-rounded yes b (d) f h Hypothesis 2 mostly BP and bp © (e) O Hypothesis 3