Knowledge of these genetic mechanisms finally came as a result of careful laboratory breeding experiments carried out over the last century and a half. The focus of genetics research then shifted to understanding what really happens in the transmission of hereditary traits from parents to children. A number of hypotheses were suggested to explain heredity, but Gregor Mendel , a little known Central European monk, was the only one who got it more or less right. His ideas had been published in the 1860's but largely went unrecognized until after his death. M endel picked common garden pea plants for the focus of his research also because they easily can be grown in large numbers and their reproduction can be manipulated.
Pea plants have both male and female reproductive organs.
In his experiments, Mendel was able to selectively cross-pollinate purebred plants with particular traits and observe the outcome over many generations. This was the basis for his conclusions about the nature of genetic inheritance. Mendel realized that this is the key to understanding the basic mechanisms of inheritance. I t is important to realize that in this experiment, the parent plants were homozygous for pea color. The plants in the f1 generation were all heterozygous .