Gregor Mendel Experiment
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Gregor Mendel was an Austrian Monk, who postulated the laws of hereditary through his pea plant experiments. Mendel experimented with over 30 thousand pea plants in a span of 15 years, and studied the various influences of heredity.
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He noted all the observations of the pea plants, and also how one pair of plants passes on its characteristics to the future generation. He also noticed that the changes that took place from one generation to another are in accordance with the environmental changes. Mendel published all his findings in 1866, but nobody paid attention to them until the 19th century. By then, Mendel had died.
Today, Mendel is called the Father of Genetics because of his invaluable contribution to the world through the laws of hereditary. Even in the present day, using Mendel’s laws several researches are being conducted, and also it is possible for us to find the causes of many life threatening diseases and also how to avoid them.
In one of his experiments Mendel cross pollinated the yellow peas with the green peas. He found that all the first generation pea plants were yellow and they took over the characteristics of the yellow pea plant only. In another experiment, he cross pollinated tall and short pea plants to find out that the resultant offsprings were tall instead of being medium-sized hybrids.
So, through these experiments Mendel learned that there are two kinds of genetic qualities. One is the dominant, while the other is the recessive in nature. The inheritance of these traits is determined by hereditary units, which are now known as genes. He went on repeating several of his experiments to study the different characteristics in several generations of pea plants.
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