Blending inheritance

Blending inheritance is an <a href="/facts/Superseded_scientific_theories/VIB7wxdE">obsolete theory</a> in <a href="/facts/Biology/1M1ee3pB">biology</a> from the 19th century. The theory is that the progeny <a href="/facts/Inheritance_(biology)/t0aMmRWx">inherits</a> any characteristic as the average of the parents' values of that characteristic. As an example of this, a crossing of a red flower variety with a white variety of the same <a href="/facts/Species/oDg6b96r">species</a> would yield pink-flowered offspring.
<a href="/facts/Charles_Darwin/uwDLGItY">Charles Darwin</a>'s theory of inheritance by <a href="/facts/Pangenesis/WdI1u2Qr">pangenesis</a>, with contributions to egg or sperm from every part of the body, implied blending inheritance. His reliance on this mechanism led <a href="/facts/Fleeming_Jenkin/16Dx1XKV">Fleeming Jenkin</a> to attack Darwin's theory of <a href="/facts/Natural_selection/JXTte6en">natural selection</a> on the grounds that blending inheritance would average out any novel beneficial characteristic before selection had time to act.
Blending inheritance was discarded with the general acceptance of <a href="/facts/Particulate_inheritance/SHrWbkce">particulate inheritance</a> during the development of modern <a href="/facts/Genetics/bu8wne0A">genetics</a>, after c. 1900.

Blending inheritance open-in-new

Blending inheritance