Why pea plant was used by Mendel to study the mechanism of inheritance of characters?
Mendel studied the common garden pea that was growing in the monastery. He observed that the pea plant had many different traits–flower color, seed shape etc. He also was aware that the pea plant could be used in both self fertilization (selfing) and cross fertilization experiments. In his study of the inheritance pattern of particular traits, Mendel always used parental plants that were truebreeding— which means that when the plant was selfed all the progeny plants had phenotypes exactly like the parents.
