What type of inheritance pattern did Mendel discover in pea plants?

Mendel's work with pea plants demonstrated the principle of simple dominance, which describes how certain traits are expressed when one allele is dominant over another. In his experiments, Mendel focused on traits governed by single genes with two contrasting alleles, such as flower color (purple vs. white) and seed shape (round vs. wrinkled).

In simple dominance, if an organism has at least one dominant allele, the dominant trait is expressed. For example, in Mendel's pea plants, the purple flower trait was dominant over the white flower trait. When he crossbred plants, he observed that the offspring displayed the dominant trait even when they inherited the recessive allele from one parent. This clear distinction in traits and their expression provides the foundation for understanding simple genetic inheritance patterns, allowing Mendel to formulate his laws of inheritance.

The other inheritance patterns mentioned, such as incomplete dominance, codominance, and polygenic inheritance, reflect more complex interactions between alleles or the influence of multiple genes on a single trait, which were not the primary focus of Mendel's original experiments. Mendel's findings were based on straightforward dominance relationships, hence the identification of simple dominance as the correct answer.