There is a place called Carolina that sells Wisconsin Fast Plants Dihybrid Genetics Classroom Kit

I know nothing about the site or its products - and if you have done this before you already know more about these places than I do.

As far as I know, Carolina's now the only company allowed to sell Fast Plants. A couple of frustrating years later (see my first post), I decided to try some other types of lab studies!

I see many flaws in this. First, you'll have to utilize plants that have been bred to be genetically pure. Locating those may be quite a task. Most seeds of popular hybrid plants will not result in offspring that are the predictable expression of visible traits.

Also, most foliage plants are reproduced by asexual means. The reasons are genetic variablity, as well as the long time (sometimes years) it takes for these plants to enter the sexual reproductive stage.

The biggest problem is going to be the time factor. Not only do you have to catch the plants when the pollen is ripe and the female organs receptive, but you'll have to wait for the resulting fruit to ripen and mature on the plants. Seed germination and plant development on top of that.

But maybe someone will have some ideas! ;-)

rhizo,

The time factor is indeed a huge concern (and why I posted in the first place, and in retrospect why house plants was probably not the best forum for this query). My labs are exploratory rather than demonstrative, meaning we're not looking to get a particular, clean result known to the class in advance. Thus, it would be interesting and worthwhile if two identical-looking parents yielded a diverse mess of offspring. But you're right, foliage/house plants are almost all going to be too slow regardless of whether I need "pure" lines or not!

I don't know what the life span of sweet peas are, but they are used in genetics experiments.

I find classroom labs most interesting because many decades ago I wanted to be a researcher - took a job in high tech to pay the bills.

It may be too late for this suggestion but have you considered starting the experiment and put them in a greenhouse then at subsequent point in time take them out with notes and have the student finish the experiment.

I've a real life example of doing this. We did this sort of thing when I worked in a clinical microbiology lab we often passed petri dishes and notes from one shift to the next. Some attempts to grow TB might take three to six months.