GENETICS at the age of , he entered the Augustinian Monastery at Brunn as a priest. From there he went to the University of Vienna for training in physics, mathematics and natural science. Mendel returned to the monastery in and continued to work as a priest and teach in high school. In his leisure time he started his famous experiments on the garden pea plant.
He conducted his experiments in the monastery for about seven years from to . He had worked on nearly 10000 pea plants of different varieties. Mendel noted that they differ from one another in many ways. Thus Mendel had chosen pairs of contrasting characters for his study as shown in the table.
Table . Constrasting characters of pea plant used by Mendel CharacterisƟc studied Dominant character Recessive character Dwarf Stem length Tall Terminal Flower PosiƟon Axillary White Flower colour Blue Constricted Pod shape Inflated Yellow Pod colour Green Seed shape Wrinkled Round Green Seed colour Yellow Reasons for Mendel’s success He chose the pea plant as it was advantageous for experimental work in many aspects . It is naturally self-pollinating and so is very easy to raise pure breeding individuals. .
It has a short life span as it is an annual and so it was possible to follow several generations. . It is easy to cross-pollinate. .
It has deeply defined contrasting characters. . The flowers are bisexual. .
Monohybrid Cross – Inheritance of One Gene Crosses involving inheritance of only one pair of contrasting characters are called monohybrid crosses. For example it is a cross between two forms of a single trait like a cross between tall and dwarf plant. Mendel’s Explanation of Monohybrid Cross Parental generation: Pure breeding tall plant and a pure breeding dwarf plant. F generation: Plants raised from the seeds of pure breeding parental cross in F generation were tall and monohybrids.
F generation: Selfing of the F monohybrids resulted in tall and dwarf plants respectively in the ratio of : . The actual number