Botany

Mendel’s experiments on pea plant

Mendel’s theory of inheritance, known as the Particulate theory, establishes the existence of minute particles or hereditary units or factors, which are now called as genes. He performed artificial pollination or cross pollination
experiments with several true-breeding lines of pea plants.

A true breeding lines (Pure-breeding
strains) means it has undergone continuous self pollination having stable trait inheritance from parent to offspring. Matings within pure
breeding lines produce offsprings having specific parental traits that are constant in inheritance and expression for many generations. Pure line breed refers to homozygosity only. Fusion of male and female gametes produced by the same individual i.e pollen and egg are derived from the same plant is known as self- fertilization. Self pollination takes place in Mendel’s peas. The experimenter can remove the anthers (Emasculation) before fertilization
and transfer the pollen from another variety of pea to the stigma of flowers where the anthers are removed. This results in cross-fertilization, which leads to the creation of hybrid varieties with different traits. Mendel’s work on the study of the pattern of inheritance and the
principles or laws formulated, now constitute the Mendelian Genetics.

Mendel worked at the rules of inheritance and arrived at the correct mechanism before any knowledge of cellular mechanism, DNA, genes, chromosomes became available. Mendel insights and meticulous work into the mechanism of inheritance played an important role which led
to the development of improved crop varieties and a revolution in crop hybridization. Mendel died in 1884. In 1900 the work of Mendel’s experiments were rediscovered by three biologists, Hugo de Vries of Holland, Carl Correns of Germany and Erich von Tschermak of Austria.

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