The reasons why Mendel chose pea plants as his experimental organism:
- They are easy to grow and breed. Pea plants are relatively easy to care for and reproduce, making them ideal for experiments.
- They have a short life cycle. Pea plants complete their life cycle in a relatively short period of time, which allowed Mendel to conduct many experiments in a short period of time.
- They have a variety of easily observable traits. Pea plants have a number of easily observable traits, such as seed color, seed shape, plant height, and flower color. This made it easy for Mendel to track how these traits were inherited from generation to generation.
- They are self-pollinating plants. Pea plants can self-pollinate, meaning that they can produce pollen that can fertilize their own eggs. This allowed Mendel to produce pure-breeding lines of pea plants with specific traits.