Why gregor mandel choose garden pea?

Answer 1

One of the reasons that Mendel carried out his breeding experiments with pea plants was that he could observe inheritance patterns in up to two generations a year.

AnswerBecause he did a lot of research and found that peas most readily demonstrated the genetic factors he wished to show.

Answer 2

Gregor Mendel originally used mice for his experiment. However, he conducted his experiments in a monastery, and the Abbot did not want him using animals. Pea plants also have very distinct characteristics.

Answer 3

Mendel used the garden peas because of the difference in each variety; the flower color, seed color, seed shape, pod color, pod shape, flower position, and plant height. So it was very easy to see which properties they developed.

Answer 4

Gregor Mendel chose the pea plants for his experiments because the garden pea is an ideal subject in the study of genetics for the following reasons:

-- presence of observable traits with contrasting forms

-- produces many offspring in one cross

-- short life cycle

-- ease in manipulating pollination (cross pollination)

Pea plants had the following chacracteristics:

1. plants were sexually reproducing with bisexual flowers
2. self pollination and self fertilization is possible
3. the life cycle was completed in one season
4. hybrids were perfectly fertile
5. many varieties with well-defined characters were available i.e. presence of seven pairs of contrasting or allelomorphic characters

Pea plants (leguminosae) have an irregular flower in which the top part of the corolla is much larger than the lower part (Hitchcock and CronquistFlora of the Pacific Northwest p228). If you haven't ever seen a pea flower, it looks much like a snap dragon bloom. This feature keeps the flowers from freely pollinating each other by wind, as they are tightly shut. If protected from pollinating insects, they will only self pollinate, or if the anthers are clipped off they can be very selectively pollinated by a person. This gave Mendel much tighter control over the crossbreeding of the plants.

Answer 5

The common garden pea (Pisum sativum) was a good "model" system because of the following:

• Controlled fertilization (isolate plants & transfer pollen with brush)
• Plants could be self-fertilized or cross-fertilized
• The 7 characteristics (gene traits) had only two forms (alleles) which made the statistics easy to deal with.