In sweet pea plants, purple flower color is dominant over red flower color and long pollen grain shape is dominant over round pollen grain shape. Two sweet pea plants that we heterozygous for both flower color and pollen grain shape are crossed with one another. A geneticistis surprised to observe that there are fewer round purple offspring and long red offspring than were predicted by the 9:3:3:1 expected phenotypie ratio. Which of the following statements provides the most reasonable prediction to account for the deviation from the expected results? A) in sweet pea plants, the gene for flower color and the gene for pollen grain shape are genetically linked
B) In sweet pea plants the genes for flower color and for pollen grain shape both exhibit codominance
C) Several mutations occurred spontaneously producing a deviation from the expected phenotypic ratio of the offspring
D) The genes for flower color and pollen grain shape are inherited independently because of the law of independent assortment