Gregor Mendel, conducted hybridisation experiments on garden peas for seven years (1856-1863) and proposed the laws of inheritance. During Mendel’s investigations into inheritance patterns it was for the first time that statistical analysis and mathematical logic were applied to problems in biology. His experiments had a large sampling size, which have greater credibility to the data that he collected. Also, the confirmation of his inferences from experiments on successive generations of his test plants, proved that his results pointed to general rules of inheritance rather than being unsubstantiated ideas.
Mendel selected only pea plant for his experiment due to presence of many types of contrasting characters, like-
(i) Round and wrinkled seed
(ii) Yellow and green seed
(iii) Violet and white flower
(iv) Inflated and constricted pod
(v) Green and yellow pod
(vi) Axillary and terminal flower
(vii) Tall and dwarf plant
Mendel investigated characters in the garden pea plant that were manifested as two opposite traits which allowed him to setup a basic frame work of rules governing inheritance. Mendel conducted such artificial pollination/cross pollination experiments using several true breeding pea lines.
Advantages of selecting pea plants for experiment by Mendel:–
(c) Due to short height of pea plant, it was easy to do experiment on that.
(d) Pea plant had a short life cycle so that results could be had within a year.
(e) Pea plant produced many seeds in one generators which helped in drawing correct conclusions.
(f) Artificial cross-pollination could be easily achieved because androecium and gynoecium were completely enclosured.
(g) Pea plants having each of the seven characters he selected were readily available.
(h) Mendel took only one character at one time for his experiment.
(i) Pea plants are self pollinated and pure.