Reasons: Why Mendel Chose Pea Plant (Pisum Stavium) For His Breeding Experiments

MENDEL, Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 — 1884) laid the foundation of classical genetics by formulating two laws of heredity;

• Law of Segregation 
• Law of Independent Assortment 

By profession, he was a priest but he's fond of gardening. He performed series of breeding experiments on garden pea, Pisum sativum in monastery garden for eleven years (1854 — 1865). Now the question arises, Why Mendel chose only the Pea Plant? There are lots of other plants and other species which can be chosen for performing experiments. But Mendel only chose Pea Plant (Pisum sativum). Following are the reasons:

Reasons For Selection Of Pea Plant:

Mendel can choose some other plant for experiments but he selected pea plant due to following reasons:

Easy to Cultivate: Pea plant (Pisum sativum) was easy to cultivate. It grew well in his garden.  

Hermaphrodite: Its flowers were hermaphrodite I.e. pea plant have both male and female sexual organs. 

Cross-fertilization (Cross-Pollination) Easily Controlled: It was normally self-fertilizing (self-pollinating) that is the fertilization of plants and some invertebrate animals by their own pollen or sperm rather than that of another individual, but could also be cross fertilized (cross-pollinated) that is the transfer of pollen grains from an anther of a flower of one plant to a stigma of a flower of another plant of the same species.  

Short Generation Time: As the time gap between generations was short, Mendel could raise many generations of pea within a short time. This is one of the main reason for choosing Pea plant (Pisum sativum).  

Many Distinct Traits: Pea had many sharply distinct. its each trait had two clear cut alternative forms or varieties: e.g. seed shape had a round or wrinkled phenotype, plant height was either tall or short, seed color could be yellow or green etc. Mendel called them pair of contrasting traits. He focused on seven such contrasting pair of traits.