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Nilsson-Ehle's experiments on Mendelian inheritance and continuous variation, 1908

The Swedish geneticist H. Nilsson-Ehle demonstrated in 1908, in a paper published in German in a Swedish journal, Einige Ergebnisse von Kreuzungen bei Hafer und Weizen (Observations on Crosses in Oats and Wheat), that continuous variation could readily be produced by multiple Mendelian genes. He found numerous Mendelian 3:1 ratios, implying a dominant and a recessive allele, in oats and wheat; a 15:1 ratio for a cross of oat varieties with black and white glumes respectively, implying two pairs of alleles (two Mendelian factors); and that crossing a red-grained Swedish velvet wheat with a white one gave in the third (F3) generation the complex signature of ratios expected of three factors at once, with 37 grains giving only red offspring, 8 giving 63:1 in their offspring, 12 giving 15:1, and 6 giving 3:1. There weren't any grains giving all white, but as he had only expected 1 of those in his sample, 0 was not an unlikely outcome. Genes could clearly combine in almost infinite combinations: ten of his factors allowed for almost 60,000 different forms, with no need to suppose that any new mutations were involved. The results implied that natural selection would work on Mendelian genes, helping to bring about the unification of Darwinian evolution and genetics.