Gregor Mendel studied pea plants because they were a good model system for studying heredity. Pea plants have several qualities that made them ideal for Mendel's experiments:
- They are easy to grow and maintain.
- Pea flowers are bisexual and self-pollinating, but cross-pollination can also be controlled easily by transferring pollen with a small paintbrush.
- The plants have distinct, easily observable traits that come in clearly different forms, such as tall or short height, round or wrinkled seeds, and green or yellow peas.
- These traits were consistent through generations in self-pollinating lines, allowing Mendel to create pure-breeding plants for controlled crosses.
- Pea plants have a relatively short life cycle, allowing many generations to be studied in a reasonable timeframe.
With these advantages, Mendel was able to observe inheritance patterns clearly and formulate fundamental principles of genetics, such as the laws of segregation and independent assortment.
