Why peas?

Although all of Mendel's experiments were carried out with pea plants, he wanted to understand something much more basic and common to all living organisms: the basis of inheritance, or what genetic information is passed between parents and offspring. Peas turned out to be a great model organism for studying inheritance for several reasons:

• Mendel could grow hundreds of plants at a time his small monastery garden

• There are several observable traits that peas can pass from parent to offspring like pea color, pea texture, and flower color

• Pea plants can actually self-breed, meaning that a single plant can act as both the mother and the father to generate its own offspring