Gregor Mendel was a monk in Austria. He developed the fundamental principles of genetics. Mendel proposed that there are “special factors” in organisms, which control the expression of traits and their transmission to next generations. These factors were eventually termed genes.
Mendel selected pea to carry out a large number of experiments. In his writing, gave reasons for this selection. He argued that an organism for genetic experiments should have the following features:
- · There should be a number of different traits that can be studied.
- · The organism should have contrasting traits e.g. for the trait of height there should be only two very different phenotypes i.e. tallness and dwarfness.
- · The organism (if it is a plant) should be self-fertilizing but cross fertilization should also be possible.
- · The organism should have a short but fast life cycle.
All these features are present in pea plant. Normally, the flowers of pea plant allow self-pollination. Cross pollination can also be done by transferring the pollen grains from the flower on one plant to the flower in another plant. Each trait studied in pea plant had right organisms for his experiments but also because he analyzed the results by using the principles of statistics (ratios).
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