GENETIC TERMS AND MENDEL'S EXPERIMENTS

   Mendel's Experiments  

      Mendel was primarily a monk in a monastery. In addition to his normal duties of preaching in the church, Mendel evinced a keen  interest in the maintenance of the garden in the premises of the church.

    In the course of his routine rounds  in the garden, Mendel was keenly observing the pattern of inheritance of  certain characters in some  of the plants.

   He became  interested in investigating the mechanism  by which the characters  are transferred from  the parent plants to their offspring.

   He decided to conduct some  experiments in this direction. After careful examination and thinking, Mendel selected the pea plants (Pisum sativum) for his experiments.

  In the pea plants, Mendel found certain clear advantages such as: 

    -   Under natural conditions  the pea plants exhibited only  self-pollination. This is because the flowers exhibit a condition called cliestogamy (petals remain closed).                                                                                                                                                                           -  Every pea plant produced a large number of seeds.  

    -  The duration of life cycle  in the pea plants was very short.  

     -  It was possible to conduct cross  pollination by transferring pollen grains from  one plant to another.

  The  following table represents the contrasting characters, which Mendel was able to identify  in the pea plants. 

 Monohybrid Traits or character of Mendel   

    During his observation between 1856 and 1865,  on the pattern of inheritance in the pea plants, He had identified three principles, which are know as  laws of inheritance.

   To prove how traits or character are inherited from parents to offsprings.

    It was because of mendel significant contribution in the field  of heredity, He is  commonly described as "Father of Modern Genetics.