Mendel's trick: careful counting |
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While plant and animal breeders produced the many domesticated species we know today, their approach produced no deep understanding of the mechanism of heredity.
This was the approach taken by the Austrian Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). |
To simplify his studies (and scientific progress often requires such constraints), he established three criteria for deciding which plants would be the most suitable for his studies.
Mendel
was able to exploit the structure of the pea flower to
generate crosses in which he knew which plant was the maternal
parent and which was the parental parent (see below). |
Mendel obtained many varieties of P. sativum and spent a number of years determining which 'bred true" for specific traits, i.e. whether self-fertilized plants always produced offspring similar to the parent. These varieties differed from one another in "length and color of the stem; in the size and form of the leaves; in the position, color, size of the flowers; in the length of the flower stalk; in the color, form, and size of the pods; in the form and size of the seeds; and in the color of the seed-coats and of the albumen (endosperm)" - G. Mendel |
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25-Jul-2009
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